Description

In a world where chance feels like fate, a mysterious pachinko parlor becomes a crossroads for lives shaped by longing, displacement, and the quiet violence of everyday survival. As patrons and staff move through shifting routines, the novel braids together intimate encounters and larger historical pressures, revealing how hope can be both refuge and trap. With lyrical intensity and unsettling precision, the book explores themes of memory, identity, and the ways people reinvent themselves when the future refuses to cooperate. Elisa Shua Dusapin’s distinctive, propulsive style turns ordinary spaces into charged stages for moral choice and emotional reckoning, inviting readers to look closely at what we gamble away—and what we keep returning for.

Available Editions

paperback edition cover

paperback

Unknown

Published Jan 1, 2022

ISBN: 9781948830812

available

Reviews

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Community Reviews(1)

@gxuosiJul 3, 2026

didn't quite stand up to the haunting atmosphere of winter in sokcho, but did nail the sweltering and somehow claustrophobic loneliness of language and identity amid diaspora.

Details

First Published

2022

Language

eng

Content Warnings

Content and trigger warnings for Pachinko Parlor by Elisa Shua Dusapin.

Racism/Discrimination
Death/Grief
War/Trauma