Baek Se-hee, author of I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, dies aged 35
The Korean author’s hit self-help memoir, which follows her conversations with her psychiatrist, sold more than a million copies worldwide
Baek Se-hee, the author of the hit self-help memoir I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, has died at the age of 35.
According to the Korean organ donation agency, Baek saved five lives through the donation of her heart, lungs, liver and both kidneys.
‘One of the oldest urban centres on the planet’: Gaza’s rich history in ruins
The territory’s ancient heritage has too often been ignored. As we mourn incalculable human losses, learning about its past can help us better understand the present
As a ceasefire brings a measure of peace to the Dresden-like hellscape that Gaza has become, it is time to take stock of all that has been lost. The human cost of what the UN commission of inquiry recognises as a genocide is of course incalculable, but fewer are aware of how much rich history and archaeology has also been destroyed in these horrific months. This is bolstered by the widespread assumption that Gaza was little more than a huge refugee camp built on a recently settled portion of desert. That is quite wrong. In reality Gaza it is one of the oldest urban centres on the planet.
Golda Meir famously declared that “there was no such thing as Palestinians”, but the reality is very different. Palestine is actually one of humanity’s oldest toponyms, and records of a people named after it are as old as literacy itself. Palestine was an established name for the coast between Egypt and Phoenicia since at least the second millennium BCE: the ancient Egyptian texts refer to “Peleset” from about 1450BCE, Assyrians inscriptions to the “Palashtu” c800BCE, and Herodotus c480BCE to “Παλαιστίνη” (Palaistinē). This was all brought home to me as I worked, with my co-presenter Anita Anand, on a 12-part series on Gaza’s history for the Empire podcast.

