Dusapin’s first novel Winter in Sokcho, set in a beautiful coastal city in Korea, won the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature. The Pachinko Parlour set in a Tokyo summer, has the same smooth, flowing style, intense atmospheric feeling, and natural dialogue, revealing the culture effortlessly and entertainingly.

Claire is a French Korean who comes to Tokyo to tutor 12-year-old Mieko. She shares her cultural experience of Japanese food and places to visit in Tokyo while living with Mieko and her mother in an abandoned hotel. She also conveys the feelings of Korean immigrants to Japan through the lives of her grandparents, who fled from the civil war in Korea. For 50 years they have owned a pachinko parlour called Shiny. It is a symbol of how they have found their shared identity in a strange land.

The pachinko parlours have held an important obsessive place in Japanese culture, being the only way to gamble in the country. Fans enjoy the mindless emptiness that Japanese culture so rarely permits.

Claire’s grandparents resist her idea of retiring from Shiny as the need for them to speak Japanese in this business is minimal and their own language is still paramount. Nor do they embrace the sugary Japanese food. When Claire offers to take them back to Korea for a visit, will they leave the security of Shiny after 50 years?

This is a short, easy-to-read novel with snappy sentences like the balls shooting around the pachinko machines. The characters have meaningful, tender relationships and I enjoyed discovering the strength of their cultural identities.

Reviewed by Judith Grace