American HagwonAmerican Hagwon

FP 1M. At last, the NYT bestselling author of PACHINKO returns with a breathtaking contemporary epic: a masterpiece by turns sweeping and intimate, one that reckons with ambition and moderation, lust and loyalty, personal dreams and familial duty. In schools and churches, hotel rooms and nail salons, law firms and fried-fish shops; in cramped, dingy apartments and luxury, gated communities, the men, women, and children in American Hagwon struggle to find satisfaction and meaning in a world that seems to grow less forgiving with each passing year. Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John’s oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Desperately striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California.