Behind the Book — Episode 119
Thirty Years of Pachinko: Min Jin Lee on Failing Well
Nora Ellis in conversation with Min Jin Lee
Recorded July 1, 2026 · 01:52
https://behindthebookfm.com/episodes/pachinko

This interview is a voiced dramatisation written by our team, drawn from the
author's publicly documented remarks on craft.

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[00:00] Nora Ellis:
Pachinko took you nearly thirty years. What were those years actually spent on?

[00:05] Min Jin Lee:
Failing well, mostly. I wrote a whole version in the nineties from the point of view of a single Korean-Japanese man and it was flat, because I was writing an argument, not a family. Then my husband's job took us to Tokyo and I interviewed dozens of people — and I realised the story belonged to the women. I threw out the manuscript and started again in my forties.

[00:29] Nora Ellis:
That's a brutal decision. How did you know it was right?

[00:34] Min Jin Lee:
Because the new pages were harder to write and easier to read. That's my only reliable test. When I'm defending a draft in my head, it's dead. When I'm nervous and curious, it's alive.

[00:48] Nora Ellis:
You trained as a lawyer. Did that help or hurt?

[00:52] Min Jin Lee:
It taught me research and it taught me to sit down when I don't feel like it, which is ninety percent of this job. It also gave me a healthy fear of getting facts wrong about real people's suffering. I over-report. Then I let the reporting sink under the surface so the reader only feels the weight.

[01:11] Nora Ellis:
Why write at all?

[01:14] Min Jin Lee:
Because ordinary people are historically invisible, and I find that unbearable. A woman selling kimchi in a market in Osaka is carrying an entire century. If I do my work properly, a reader in Ohio who has never thought about Korea for a minute of her life will grieve for her. That transaction is, to me, the point of the form.

[01:37] Nora Ellis:
Advice for a writer holding a manuscript nobody wants yet?

[01:42] Min Jin Lee:
Keep it, keep going, and get older. Patience is an underrated craft skill — some books need the writer to become a different person first.