I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki

THE PHENOMENAL KOREAN BESTSELLER TRANSLATED BYINTERNATIONAL BOOKER SHORTLISTEE ANTON HUR PSYCHIATRIST: So how can I helpyou? ME: I don’t know, I’m – what’s the word – depressed?

Do I have to go into detail? Baek Sehee is a successfulyoung social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing apsychiatrist about her – what to call it? – depression?

She feels persistently low, anxious, endlesslyself-doubting, but also highly judgemental of others.

She hides her feelings well at work and with friends; adeptat performing the calmness, even ease, her lifestyle demands.

The effort is exhausting, overwhelming, and keeps her fromforming deep relationships.

This can’t be normal. But if she’s so hopeless, why can shealways summon a desire for her favourite street food, the hot, spicy rice cake,tteokbokki?

Is this just what life is like?

Recording her dialogues with her psychiatrist over a 12-weekperiod, Baek begins to disentangle the feedback loops, knee-jerk reactions andharmful behaviours that keep her locked in a cycle of self-abuse.

Part memoir, part self-help book, I Want to Die but I Wantto Eat Tteokbokki is a book to keep close and to reach for in times ofdarkness.

About the Author

Born in 1990, Baek Sehee studied creative writing inuniversity before working for five years at a publishing house. For ten years,she received psychiatric treatment for dysthymia (persistent mild depression),which became the subject of her essays, and then I Want to Die, but I Want toEat Tteokbokki, books one and two. Her favorite food is tteokbokki, and shelives with her rescue dog Jaram.