American Hagwon
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 29 Sept 2026
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- 27,99 €
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- Pre-Order
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- 27,99 €
Publisher Description
‘Profoundly generous and humane’ DOUGLAS STUART
‘Engrossing … brilliantly imagined’ COLM TÓIBÍN
‘Enchanting … 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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lee returns nine years after Pachinko with an illuminating saga of ambition, education, and familial duty. In 1992 Seoul, John Koh loses his job at a prestigious trading firm after a woman he fired at the behest of his boss wrongly accuses him of attempted rape. He finagles a new post in Sydney with the same firm but for lower pay, and his wife, Helen, works in retail to help keep up with tuition costs for their younger son, DH, at Yale and their daughter, Mido, at the University of Sydney. Meanwhile, their older son, Bo, has become a tutor in California at a hagwon after-school academy for students with their sights set on top high schools and colleges. After the Asian financial crisis hits in 1997, eliminating John's and Helen's jobs, they start over in California, where they take menial jobs and Mido, pausing her education, joins Bo at the hagwon. Hardworking and sharp Mido helps the hagwon expand, but she's dismayed by her students' single-minded focus on achievement over learning. Lee's exposition-heavy style feels a bit flat compared to her previous novel, but she writes with precision and keen insights into her characters' obsession with education and the cost of their sacrifices. Patient readers will find much to ponder.
