I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki

The internationally bestselling therapy memoir translated by International Booker shortlistee Anton Hur. PSYCHIATRIST: So how can I help you? ME: I don't know, I'm-what's the word-depressed? Do I have to go into detail? Baek Sehee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her-what to call it?-depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgmental of others. She hides her feelings well at work, but the effort is exhausting, overwhelming, and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can't be normal. But if she's so hopeless, why can she always summon a desire for her favorite street food: the hot, spicy rice cake, tteokbokki? Is this just what life is like? Recording her dialogues with her psychiatrist over a twelve-week period, and expanding on each session with her own reflective micro-essays, Baek begins to disentangle the harmful behaviors that keep her locked in a cycle of self-abuse. Part memoir, part self-help book, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is the first book in a duology to keep close and to reach for in times of darkness.

Baek Se-hee (Korean: 백세희) was a South Korean author best known for her memoir, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki (2018), and its sequel, I Want to Die but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki (2019). Both works related to her treatment for depression and her conflicted thoughts about it. She sadly passed away on October 2025.

Anton Hur (Korean: 허정범; born April 7, 1981) is a Korean writer and translator of Korean literature into English. He has translated the works of Kyung-Sook Shin, Hwang Sok-yong, and Sang Young Park, whose Love in the Big City was longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize, and Bora Chung, whose collection of short stories Cursed Bunny was shortlisted for the same prize. Hur was also the only translator that year to have been longlisted for two translations. Hur was awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants for his translation of Cursed Bunny. Hur was awarded a PEN Translates grant to translate The Underground Village by Kang Kyeong-ae.