Min Jin Lee’s first novel in nearly a decade is coming later this year.
Cardinal, an imprint of Grand Central Publishing, will release Lee’s American Hagwon in the fall, the press announced in a news release. It calls the book “a masterpiece by turns sweeping and intimate, one that reckons with ambition and moderation, lust and loyalty, personal dreams and familial duty.”
Lee made her literary debut in 2007 with the novel Free Food for Millionaires and 10 years later published the novel Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award. The novel was adapted for an Apple TV+ series that received significant critical acclaim; Kirkus’ David Rapp called it “a spectacular adaptation.”
American Hagwon, Cardinal says, follows the couple John and Helen Koh and their three children, who live in Seoul until their lives are thrown into disarray by betrayal and the Asian financial crisis of 1997. The family moves to Australia and then southern California, as John and Helen struggle to educate their children as best they can.
“Min Jin Lee has crafted an unforgettable, panoramic novel where the smallest of gestures can have enormous repercussions, where the bonds of family and of memory twist and fray but rarely break, and where willful self-sacrifice—for the benefit of loved ones and even strangers—is a kind of prayer,” Cardinal says.
In a video posted on the Instagram account of 4th Estate Books, which will publish the novel in the U.K., Lee said, “Almost a decade ago, I started to write American Hagwon because I wanted to understand why education is so important to Koreans around the world. After I wrote it, I realized that I wanted to know for myself how to live a wise life in a world that was changing far too fast for me. The more life transforms at an alarming rate, the more I realize that wisdom and deep engagement are the qualities that I seek the most in an immersive narrative.”
American Hagwon is slated for publication on Sept. 29.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
