American Hagwon

Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children — Bo, DH and Mido — find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John's oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California, where new vistas of opportunity open up for the children while their parents, strangers in a strange land, must adjust to a life in which their experience and education mean little.

The Kohs — along with their friends, relatives and even their foes — move in and out of each other's lives across the years, sustained by an almost all-consuming faith that education will lead the next generation to success and security. A panoramic novel about family, sacrifice and the cost of ambition, from the author of Pachinko.