Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then Isak, a Christian minister, offers her a chance of salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife.
Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country in which she has no friends, no home, and whose language she cannot speak, Sunja’s salvation is just the beginning of her story.
Through eight decades and four generations, Pachinko is an epic tale of family, identity, love, death and survival.
Pachinko is a classic family saga set in a place and period of history about which I know (or knew) very little. The Japanese occupation of Korea during the first half of the 20th century led to many Koreans moving to Japan to escape poverty only to be faced with discrimination, and even when the story ends in 1989 their grand-children and great-grandchildren who were born in Japan are treated as immigrants with less rights than those of native born Japanese.
Ms Min Jin Lee has created a compelling story which encompasses the legacy of the occupation, the Second World War, the division of Korea into two countries during a bitter civil war. But it is not merely a novel about history, Asian peoples have a deep spirituality which also shapes them and the way they live their lives so Confucianism, Buddhism and Christianity underpin the actions of a well-crafted cast of characters who bring Pachinko to life. The story-arc is complex, weaving the lives of a number of families together, and it is easy to become attached to them as you sympathise with the troubles they face, the lives they are forced to live and the heartbreak which follows them.
Ms Min Jin Lee has an eye for detail and brings to life the living conditions, food and work place of her characters; life in the city and life in the countryside are equally well portrayed as are the trials and tribulations of an immigrant community where people struggle with a sense of dual identity. There is much in this novel which will speak to people today about their place in society – how welcoming they are to others, how much others strive to fit in. But above all it will speak to people on a human level as Sunja and her family struggle with friendship and duty, pain and loss, and above all love, in a way which affects all people no matter what age or nationality.
Pachinko is absorbing, distressing and yet heart-warming in almost equal measure. Yes, it is a family sage, but it is also much more than that. It is a story of resilience and compassion as four generations of Koreans struggle to find their identity and place in a world which does not want them. A powerful novel which I heartily recommend.
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The Far Pavilions is the story of an English man – Ashton Pelham-Martyn – brought up as a Hindu. It is the story of his passionate, but dangerous love for Juli, an Indian princess. It is the story of divided loyalties, of friendship that endures till death, of high adventure and of the clash between East and West.
Beneath the light of the candle I am sitting with my hands on my knees, staring in front of me. And I keep turning over in my mind the thought that I am at the end of the earth, in a place which you do not know and which your whole lives through you will never visit.
An enchanting historical epic of grand passion and adventure, this debut novel tells the captivating story of one of India’s most controversial empresses — a woman whose brilliance and determination trumped myriad obstacles, and whose love shaped the course of the Mughal Empire. Skilfully blending the textures of historical reality with the rich and sensual imaginings of a timeless fairy tale, The Twentieth Wife sweeps readers up in Mehrunnisa’s embattled love with Prince Salim, and in the bedazzling destiny of a woman — a legend in her own time — who was all but lost to history until now.
Brilliant but troubled, Meriwether Lewis never found his footing after returning home from the West in triumph. It is with some reluctance that the young discoverer accepted the job as Governor of the sprawling new Louisiana Territory he had just explored. Within a year of arriving in St. Louis, the remote frontier town that served as capital of the West, Lewis’s life had entered a downhill slide. He became convinced that he would soon be dismissed in disgrace by the corrupt politicians in Washington he had sworn to serve, and vowed to travel to Washington to set the record straight. The next weeks of Meriwether Lewis’s life can fairly be called one of the great unsolved mysteries of American history. All anyone really knows is that on October 11, 1809, Meriwether Lewis was found shot dead in a remote inn on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, a road through the wilderness so dangerous it was called “The Devil’s Backbone.” Was it suicide? Or murder? To this day, historians cannot agree. No inquest was ever held into Lewis’s death; no investigation was ever undertaken. Based on extensive historical research, To the Ends of the Earth reconstructs Lewis’s last days and brings alive the atmosphere of intrigue and danger that characterized the early American West. Then, in a powerful reimagining of the tale, it is given to brave William Clark, Lewis’s best friend and partner in discovery, the role of discovering the truth. Clark’s relationships with Lewis, his teenage wife Julia, and his African-American slave York form much of the emotional core of the novel. Readers will join Lewis and Clark on the final voyage of their legendary friendship in a story of honor, vengeance, and, ultimately, redemption.
Despised for his weakness and regarded by his family as little more than a stammering fool, the nobleman Claudius quietly survives the intrigues, bloody purges and mounting cruelty of the imperial Roman dynasties. In I, Claudius he watches from the sidelines to record the reigns of its emperors: from the wise Augustus and his villainous wife Livia to the sadistic Tiberius and the insane excesses of Caligula. Written in the form of Claudius’ autobiography, this is the first part of Robert Graves’s brilliant account of the madness and debauchery of ancient Rome, and stands as one of the most celebrated, gripping historical novels ever written.
On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov – recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt – is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol. 
A stunning debut historical thriller set in the turbulent 14th Century for fans of CJ Sansom, The Name of the Rose and An Instance of the Fingerpost. 
January 1069. Less than three years have passed since Hastings and the death of the usurper, Harold Godwineson. In the depths of winter, two thousand Normans march to subdue the troublesome province of Northumbria. Tancred a Dinant, an ambitious and oath-sworn knight and a proud leader of men, is among them, hungry for battle, for silver and for land.
Dorinda Balchin - Author 