American Hagwon

About the book

‘Profoundly generous and humane’ DOUGLAS STUART

‘Engrossing … brilliantly imagined’ COLM TÓIBÍN

‘Breathtaking … I adored it’ ELIF SHAFAK

‘Extraordinary’ TARA WESTOVER

Min Jin Lee, the acclaimed author of Pachinko, returns with a breathtaking contemporary epic that follows one family as they reckon with personal dreams and familial duty.

John and Helen Koh and their three children – Bo, DH and Mido – are building new lives in Korea when they find their worlds upended, first by a terrible betrayal and then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Striving to regain their footing, the Kohs set out to do whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures.

They leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in California, where new opportunities open for the Koh children, as the parents, strangers in a strange land, adjust to a difficult existence in which their qualifications mean little. Their way forward is lit by the faith that education will lead the next generation to the success and security that have eluded their parents.

The Kohs, their friends, relatives and even their foes move in and out of each other’s lives as they navigate love, work, fortune and fulfilment across the years. But with each new sacrifice and fresh horizon, larger questions begin to open up before them: what are we willing to give up to secure the happiness of the ones we love? What is the purpose of education? And what is truly important for a good life?

American Hagwon is the most ambitious and extraordinary work yet by one of our greatest novelists.

A New York Times most anticipated book of the year and seen in Elle, Harper's Bazaar, New Yorker, Independent, TIME and more.

‘If your faith in either humanity or storytelling has dimmed, American Hagwon will make it blaze again’ KAMILA SHAMSIE, author of Best of Friends

‘Incredibly beautiful … an absolute joy that you will take with you for the rest of your life’ JOANNA CANNON, author of An Unlikely Visitor

‘Enchanting and elegant, American Hagwon had me completely absorbed … as dazzlingly intelligent as it is emotionally breathtaking’ ELIF SHAFAK, author of There Are Rivers In The Sky

‘A world so rich and intricate that you forget you're reading’ TARA WESTOVER, author of Educated

‘Lee is truly the master of the generational epic’ BOOKSELLER

‘I read huge swaths of this book with my heart in my throat’ JACQUELINE WOODSON, author of Red At The Bone

‘A moving epic of family life … heart-warming, heart-breaking’ ERICA WAGNER, author of Gravity