Barbara J. Zitwer: Author of The Korean Book of Happiness

This week, Jack is joined by the legendary international literary agent, Barbara J. Zitwer. Barbara has been at the forefront of bringing some of the most exciting voices from Korea over to the Anglosphere, from Han Kang, the author of The Vegetarian, to the Man Asian Booker Prize winner, Shin Kyung-sook, to name a few.

Now she has released her own book, The Korean Book of Happiness, sharing with us the knowledge she has gained from her years working closely with Korean writers.

Purchase The Korean Book of Happiness

(0:27) Introduction
(8:01) Translated texts
(21:41) The Korean Book of Happiness
(26:59) Why Korea?
(31:14) Recipes in the book

Welcome to Mostly Books Meets, a weekly podcast by the independent award-winning bookshop, Mostly Books. Nestled in the Oxfordshire town of Abingdon-on-Thames, Mostly Books has been spreading the joy of reading for fifteen years. Whether it’s a book, gift, or card you need the Mostly Books team is always on hand to help. Visit our website.

The podcast is produced and presented by Jack Wrighton and the team at Mostly Books. It is edited by Story Ninety-Four. Find us on Twitter @mostlyreading & Instagram @mostlybooks_shop.

Meet the host:
Jack Wrighton is a bookseller and social media manager at Mostly Books. His hobbies include photography and buying books at a quicker rate than he can read them.
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The Korean Book of Happiness is published in the UK by Short Books Ltd

Books mentioned in this episode include:
The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness by Kyung-sook Shin - ISBN: 9781681772370
Walking Practice by Dolki Min - ISBN: 9780063258617
The Vegetarian by Han Kang - ISBN: 9781846276033

To find more titles, visit our website

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Mostly Books

Award-winning indie bookshop in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

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[00:00:00] Jack Wrighton: Welcome to Mostly Books Meets, the weekly incurably bookish. We will be talking to authors and creatives from across the world of publishing and discussing the books they have loved. Looking for a recommendation? Then look no further. Head to your favorite cozy spot and let us pick out your next favorite book.
It is my great pleasure to welcome onto the podcast this week the legendary international literary agent, Barbara J. Zitwer. In recent years, the interest in translated fiction has boomed, particularly an interest in the work of Korean authors. Barbara has been at the forefront of bringing some of the most exciting voices from Korea over to the Anglosphere, from Han Kang, the author of The Vegetarian, to the Man Asian Booker Prize winner, Shin Kyung-sook, to name a few.
Now she has released her own book, The Korean Book of Happiness, sharing with us the knowledge she has gained from her years working closely with Korean writers. Barbara, welcome to Mostly Books Meets.
[00:01:03] Barbara J Zitwer: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:04] Jack Wrighton: It's our absolute pleasure. Now, this book that you've written, The Korean Book of Happiness, it's a really lovely, I feel, introduction to Korea, its culture, its food. I think for anyone who's interested but needs a first step, it's a wonderful introduction to that. But of course, your relationship with Korea and particularly its culture goes back a little while. If you wouldn't mind, for our listeners, sort of saying where that began. When did this relationship begin?
[00:01:30] Barbara J Zitwer: Well, it began totally by accident. Just a quirk of fate, and I have my own literary agency. I'm not part of a big corporate agency, and so I've always searched out and found authors that I love and I can get passionate about. So... It's not easy, and I don't represent any huge, huge, mega, global bestsellers, so I don't have a huge slush pile, and so I find writers in all different ways, and about, in 2008, I guess, I found myself with no new books to sell, and there was nothing I was excited about, and my Korean co agent named Joseph Lee came to New York for a book fair that was in Manhattan and I said, you know, why don't I take you out to dinner? I'd love to treat you and, you know, have a nice time. Thank you for your service to me in Korea. I knew nothing about Korea. I never spoke the language. I knew nothing, really, except I had discovered some books that I had fallen in love with so I took Joseph out to dinner and I'm lamenting about, I have no books to sell and I don't know what to do and it's like Joseph, aren't there any like fabulous young hot writers in Korea? And he looked at me and I saw like a light bulb go off in his head and he cocks his head to the side he's like, well, yes, there are and he started telling me about various books including a book called I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, which was written by Young-Ha Kim and it's like give me that book, love the title. I mean, I totally relate What is it? And Young Ha Kim was awake and up in Korea. We were in New York at night It was morning in Seoul, so Joseph called him and we had a conversation in the restaurant, and I'm like, this is so fabulous, oh my god. So, I got a partial of that, and then he started sending me other books, none of which had ever, ever been published in English, or anywhere in the world and I was astounded, and that's how it started.
[00:03:45] Jack Wrighton: Mmm. And it feels almost strange to think of that now, because, you know, Mostly Books. We're a small bookshop in a small Oxfordshire town, quite a small community, and yet we regularly have translated Korean works in the shop, and they sell. A real popular one that I've recommended that has gone down really well with the local populace has been Cursed Bunny, the, short stories, which, were translated by Anton Hur, who I know, I believe you've, you've worked with before.
[00:04:12] Barbara J Zitwer: I discovered him.
[00:04:13] Jack Wrighton: Oh, you discovered him. Oh, amazing. So you're really, I was really not lying when I said you're at the forefront that, you know, I'm going to be mentioning names all day and you'll be saying, oh yes, yeah, I discovered them!
[00:04:23] Barbara J Zitwer: I know. well, Anton, I just saw him in New York for a book event for Kyung Sook Shin's I Went to See My Father, and we were talking and there were other people around and I said, I discovered you and I'm like so thrilled that how your career has blossomed, and I had published, a book called the J. M. Barrie Ladies Swimming Society in English. It's published by Short Books and it's available. It was published. 10 more, more years ago, and so my book was published in Korea. So the, I was invited to go to a big book event in Korea at a place called Gumpo City, which is known as Book City, and they had a huge festival of books. It was like all weekend, and I was a keynote speaker, and Anton was a young interpreter, and he interpreted for me, and then I kind of had a disagreement with my Korean publisher, because their distribution wasn't very good, and I found out, so I was very annoyed with them and I didn't wanna drive back with them to Seoul. So I said, Anton, do you wanna come with me? I'm taking a taxi back, taking a cab back to Seoul, even though it was like four hours, and he said, sure. So we were in the cab and we're talking, and I said to him, you know, oh, he's an interpreter, he's a translator, and we needed a new translator for kung souk shin.
So I said, Anton, do you want to translate Kyung-sook Shin's new, a new book by her? And he's like, oh, Shin, she's God. I love her. Yes. And I'm like, fabulous. Okay, great. You want to meet her tomorrow? We'll have coffee. So I arranged it, and the first book that he translated was called The Court Dancer, which is a remarkable novel and I forgot, in London, in New York, he told me, I said, oh, yes, The Court Dancer. He said, well, you said to me, you could translate any of Shin's books, whatever you want, you know, because she has a big backlist. So, he chose The Court Dancer because the main character became a translator in the book.
[00:06:35] Jack Wrighton: Oh, there we go. We can see the interest there.
[00:06:38] Barbara J Zitwer: Right? And I didn't even, I didn't even remember that. I said, oh, Anton, that's like, he's brilliant. And that's an amazing book, The Court Dancer. It's fabulous, and I'm very proud to say that Kyung-sook Shin, as I told her, I think she's the only, maybe, translated author that I can think of who's had one of her novels translated and published in English every two years since I met her. So she's had six books published in English.
[00:07:12] Jack Wrighton: Oh, wow. That is a big achievement because the translation process is, you know, it's not. quick, you know, it's a steady process, and we can find in the shop that we get books in that to us are new because the translation's new, but then you look at the original publication date in, you know, whichever country and it's many. So to have that regularity is really a testament, I think, to the hunger for that, for her work.
[00:07:36] Barbara J Zitwer: It's amazing, and then I look on Amazon and I'm like, Please Look After Mom, I'll Be Right There, The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness, The Court Dancer, Violets, and now I Went to See My Father.
[00:07:50] Jack Wrighton: Yes, which, yeah, which we have, yeah, we have in the shop as well. So...
[00:07:55] Barbara J Zitwer: It's brilliant, and Anton is now her translator. He loves her. We love him.
[00:08:01] Jack Wrighton: I was going to say, because I can imagine from, would you say from your vantage point, is the relationship between a translator and the author, is it quite a close one? Can it be, or can it sometimes be quite distant? I'm very interested in that relationship that might exist there.
[00:08:16] Barbara J Zitwer: I think there's a closeness and an intimacy with the words and the language and the book. Not necessarily at all with the person. Of course, a translator and author like each other. But when a translator takes over to translate a book, he or she really transforms, I think they're magicians. I think translators are, for me, the most incredible human beings.
I don't know how they do what they do. It's magic. It's magic. So they have to take a work and reflect and translate it into another language that works in that other language and also represents the author's intention, but it can't be literal at all. So I think a translator needs freedom to be able to translate freely and creatively, and those are the best translations and also, for the most part, the Korean authors, or any authors I represent, authors from all over the world, they don't read English, they don't read Italian, they don't read French. So, they really are not necessarily the best judges of the translation.
[00:09:41] Jack Wrighton: Sounds like, as a, certainly as a career, something that you'd have to be very adaptable to be in. It sounds like you're always having to sort of bat things left, right, and centre, and keeping balls in the air.
[00:09:52] Barbara J Zitwer: Totally. I'm on the football field like Damar Hamlin. I mean, as an agent. I think as a writer, too. I've always been ahead of the curve. I'm always like, everything I've done is like, way behind me. I don't even think about it. It's like onwards, what's new, what's happening, what's, you know, once every year or two, whatever, I feel like, two years ago, I was in a slump again, like, no book, nothing interesting, no books to sell, what am I gonna do, blah, blah, blah, I can't take it anymore, and this... I'm always looking for new translators. I have to have new translators. So, I'm always writing, discovering, looking, searching who's a new translator. So, I heard about a new translator named Victoria Caudill, and I said, Victoria, can you send me like five pages of anything you've translated so I can see your work?
Because I could tell in one page if a translation is good or not. So she sent me five pages of something that blew me away, and it was the best thing I had read in more than ten years. I flipped out! I flipped out, so I said to her, Oh my god, I need, like, twenty pages. I need more. I need to know everything.
She was coming to New York the next day. She goes to school in California. Her parent family lives on the East Coast. I said, I'll take you out to lunch. We went out to lunch. I sat, I said, okay, tell me every single thing about this book, every sentence, like, I'm closing my eyes. Just, you know, make it happen!
[00:11:40] Jack Wrighton: Tell me the story, yeah.
[00:11:42] Barbara J Zitwer: Yeah, and I was like hype, I got high. I got a literary high! And the book was called Walking practice and it's by a young author named Dolki Min and okay, this was amazing, amazing what happened. I said I have to have this book. I have to meet this author so we hooked up with the author. The author is a young writer who could not get his book published anywhere. Was ready, his debut novel was ready to give up, and he self published a few copies and hand bound that I think Victoria got one, I don't know how. Someone gave her a copy. It came to my hands, and I said to him, Dolki I'm gonna sell this book in English first, and then I'm gonna sell it in Korea. Don't worry about it. This is absolute He is like a young David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust.
[00:12:51] Jack Wrighton: Goodness, that is a title to have, that is a title to have.
[00:12:55] Barbara J Zitwer: Yes, literary, and I'll tell you what his book is. So, I ended up selling it very quickly to Harper Via, which is one of the best publishers in the world, and World English Language, and then in a first for me, I sold a Korean author who's my client now, I'm the primary agent, but I sold it in Korea.
[00:13:17] Jack Wrighton: Goodness. So we've gone full circle.
[00:13:19] Barbara J Zitwer: Can you believe that?
[00:13:20] Jack Wrighton: That is, that must be such an, the moment of finding a work like that, particularly one, and it seems to be always the case that when there's these big successes or these great pieces of work is, it always seems to start with an author who can't seem to get their work out there and then it just takes the right person to kind of recognise what's going on here to go, I'm going to run with this.
[00:13:44] Barbara J Zitwer: Exactly, and now I'll tell you what the book is about, and I'm selling it, sold in two countries now, I'm selling it around the world. My film agent in London is selling the film rights now. The book is about an alien who is stranded on Earth, and in order to survive, it has to eat and hunt for food.
So it eats, it hunts for food on Tinder and dating sites and, okay, and it transforms its body from male to female depending on the date it has, and then it meets the date as a man or a woman and then they have intercourse and at the moment of climax it chops its, the head off the lover and eats it.
[00:14:41] Jack Wrighton: Oh goodness! It's like a praying mantis then, of, yes.
[00:14:46] Barbara J Zitwer: Okay, and what happens in the book, it's a short book, you've gotta read it, it's brilliant, you can get it in the UK, I'm sure your bookshop, people will love this book.
[00:14:55] Jack Wrighton: Mm, absolutely.
[00:14:56] Barbara J Zitwer: And, it's the same, I, I mean, I felt like, when I first read The Vegetarian, which I read so long ago, but that book I thought was so incredible, I loved it, and I still love it, of course, but how the woman stopped eating meat, and the way the meat would just drip out of her refrigerator, and how in the end of the book she turned into a tree. I mean, it was... what can I say?
[00:15:24] Jack Wrighton: Nothing else.
[00:15:26] Barbara J Zitwer: My kind of book. So, Dolki's book, I had been looking for a gender issue book, because LGBTQ, you know, gender, it's a very hot topic, everyone is doing this, but I wanted to find a book in that area that I loved, and I found this, and it's like, oh my, this is like so brilliant, and the author, okay, so what happens, I won't tell you what happens in the end, but you are in love, it is so filled with humanity and you feel so much love and affection for this alien, as well as it's horrific and very funny, and it has to practice walking on the gravity heavy Earth, hence the title. Now, this was, I think, full circle, the first time I sold a Korean author that I discovered in Korea, in English first, and then sold it in Korea.
[00:16:29] Jack Wrighton: That moment when you realised you, you know, had done that, and that full circle was, you know, completed, must have been such a great feeling for you.
[00:16:37] Barbara J Zitwer: Oh, it was wonderful. But more so, I have to say that I was so thrilled for the author. Because the author is gender fluid and uses a pseudonym, and he wears a mask that he created out of leather. It's unbelievable. So no one knows what he looks like, because there's so much prejudice and it's such a taboo to be gay in Korea and his family, friends, no one knows who he really is. I know who, what he, who he really is and what he looks like, and he's absolutely beautiful, and he is one of the most remarkable contemporary writers, I think, with a very strong voice. If... I have collection of short stories that he's working on finishing, but each story, you totally know Dolki Min wrote them completely. It's like, you know, you see a Picasso, you know, he painted it.
[00:17:41] Jack Wrighton: Yeah.
[00:17:41] Barbara J Zitwer: You read Dolki Min, you know he wrote it.
[00:17:44] Jack Wrighton: Oh, how exciting. What I can really tell, which is, you know, lovely, is you talk about, oh, I was in, I was in this, you know, funk, as it were, and I was looking for the next thing, is you obviously really do live for this work, and for the, it does give you a high, as you say, I can tell that, hearing you speak now.
[00:18:04] Barbara J Zitwer: Oh, definitely. It's like orgasmic!
[00:18:09] Jack Wrighton: When you find that, when you find that wand,one you're like, this is it, I know.
[00:18:13] Barbara J Zitwer: You know, when you find that and it's, and you read something new and fresh, and that's what's so great about these Korean writers, they're, the writers that I work with, I think, they're so ahead, like, I read books that are written 10, 20 years ago, they're about climate change, they're about the women's movement, they're about, you know, abortion issues, they're about issues that are so on the button today and I sold a book. Well I've worked with Pyun Hye-young. Pyun is an amazing writer. She was published in The New Yorker and her book. The whole was published by arcade and she won the Shirley Jackson prize and Sam Esmail, the filmmaker acquired the film rights to this book. So, she's an... and also with Pyun you know her stories, her writing, she's very interested in the environment and the environment on people and what people do to it and alienation. She's almost like Kamu. I'm not kidding. You know, she's amazing, or Stranger in a Strange Land, Fahrenheit 451. So, her new novel, which I read on the plane over to the London Book Fair, because, yeah, I just finally got the translation after three years, because her translator is meticulous. Plus, she had a baby, and then she had another baby, and I didn't... And I didn't know that, and I just kept saying to her, Sora, her name is Sora Kim Russell. She's brilliant. I'm like, where's the book? What's going on? Come on. I mean, really? Some people translate a book in two months.
[00:20:10] Jack Wrighton: Heh, and she's there with two kids crawling all over her, and she's thinking, I'm doing my best, I'm trying my best here!
[00:20:15] Barbara J Zitwer: I know, but she doesn't tell me that. She just will write to me and say, you know, but I find out from other people, Oh, she just had another baby, and she went through this. I'm like, Oh my God, I wish I knew!
[00:20:26] Jack Wrighton: Yeah.
[00:20:26] Barbara J Zitwer: Now I have to send her baby gifts!
[00:20:29] Jack Wrighton: Yes. I'm so sorry for rushing you, I didn't mean to.
[00:20:33] Barbara J Zitwer: I know. But let me tell you, it was well worth the wait, because the translation is so brilliant, and so I read it on the plane over, and it's an amazing book that thematically could be like a Korean sister to Eleanor Caton's Burnham Wood. Because Eleanor's book is about, you know, this billionaire trying to destroy the land and take over this piece of property without anyone knowing what he's doing. I love the book, by the way. It's like my favorite book of the month or year, and this book, I found it delightfully light.
[00:21:15] Jack Wrighton: Mm.
[00:21:15] Barbara J Zitwer: I don't know why. I just, I thought it had a buoyancy different than her other books, but maybe I have a very dark sense of humor. I love Lionel, I love Lionel shriver.
[00:21:27] Jack Wrighton: Right, okay. So the sort of darker side of things is something you chime with, you feel, you know, at home with?
[00:21:36] Barbara J Zitwer: Yeah, because I feel, you know, someone said this to me, which is interesting about my book, The Korean Book of Happiness. I was doing a talk in London at the Korean Cultural Center, and the moderator was saying, Oh, what's with you? You know, the Korean Book of Happiness, and it's just like, Oh, temple stay, oh, this it's so happy, happy. What's so happy? You know, they have a plummeting birth rate and they have cram schools and, you know, it's not happy, and you know, Barbara, like you're delusional. Someone asked me in the audience, they said, I think you're living in a bubble because you just see things, you know, the way you see things and the way they're not, and I'm like, No, because what I wrote about was joy, resilience, and the art of giving, which is Han, Hung, and Zhang, and the happiness that one feels in life, I think, you get from pain and suffering. If you didn't have pain and suffering, you wouldn't know what real happiness is. I think that's true, and the Koreans, what I found in Korea were, you know, pain and suffering of being enslaved and basically a colony of Japan for centuries and then, you know, an emperor, an empress, and then being a shrimp between two whales of China and Japan and being, it's the only divided country in the world. The DM zone is the only divided country in the world, and the point is that, my book, it is about the happiness that I found there, and we can all find in our lives, but particularly the Koreans, through these Buddhist Confucian principles and ways of being, they turn their pain and suffering into action, in being positive in order to move forward, and The deepest joys in life to me are not going to a fancy ball or the coronation, although I thought it was fabulous, and I wish I had been there, but that's not something, or, you know, the Met Gala, in New York, that's not something that makes you happy, you know, what makes you happy is, you know, waking up at four in the morning in a Buddhist temple, completely alone and hearing the gong, and following monks and seeing a full moon and learning how to do, you know, the 108 bows, even though your knees are killing you, and how are you going to get off the floor?
[00:24:31] Jack Wrighton: And so do you think the moderator or whoever it was in the audience, they were, what, chastising you for not sort of having a look at Korea as a whole? Because, of course, every, you know, any country is complex and has, you know, light and dark, you know, shades. Whereas you were focusing on this particular aspect. Is that what you were saying to them?
[00:24:57] Barbara J Zitwer: Well, these were the only people that felt that way, by the way. You know, there are the eternal pessimists, right? In the world, and I said, well, anyway, this is my book and this is what I got out of all my year. This book, I feel Korea finally gave me personally something after all my years. This is the gift that Korea gave to me for Barbara, and that makes me so happy because I work really hard. I killed myself for them, and I still do, and it's not easy, it's very difficult. I don't have, like, the huge best selling authors yet, you know, translation, the amount of time and money and the advances and the track record, and you name it and I handle, you know, very interesting books, but they haven't taken off to the level of some other books, you know, but it's like, I understand them, I think they're brilliant, they have longevity and they're great. So this is what I do, and I feel that Korea gave me, just something in my book that makes me totally happy.
[00:26:21] Jack Wrighton: Absolutely, and I love the way it's laid out in the sense of, you know, there's recipes. It just feels like a real, you know, for someone who is unfamiliar with Korea, it feels like such a lovely sort of introduction and, you know, having those recipes there, it's a great sort of insight for those who then, you know, might want to go over and discover more for themselves, would you say that's kind of what you were aiming to do with it? Or, you know, where did, where did the idea come for you for the book? When did you start writing it?
[00:26:51] Barbara J Zitwer: Well, I started once again, like a year and a half ago.
[00:26:57] Jack Wrighton: Yeah.
[00:26:58] Barbara J Zitwer: Which this book came out so quickly because a year and a half ago, literally, I was finishing the draft for Holland. What happened was, it was about three years ago, and once again I had no books I wanted to sell, and I was thinking about what could be a commercial book that I could, you know, find and I thought, if I said, well there must be a book like Icky Guy or The Little Book of Hygge.
[00:27:26] Jack Wrighton: Yes. Yeah.
[00:27:27] Barbara J Zitwer: You know, this comfort from Denmark, and the Japanese way of comfort and...
[00:27:34] Jack Wrighton: Yeah.
[00:27:35] Barbara J Zitwer: ...you know, these little gift books, but with little sayings, and I thought, well, gee, if I, there must be one in Korean, and that would be something that would be very sellable. So I asked Sue to go look for me, cause she reads, you know, she's all on the internet in Korea and the bookstores, and, so we discovered that there were no books like this. So I'm like, well, I guess I'll write it myself, because I knew the subject. I mean, I knew exactly everything, and it's just, so I wrote the book, the first draft of the book, actually it was called, Why Korea.
[00:28:17] Jack Wrighton: Ah, okay. Oh, interesting.
[00:28:19] Barbara J Zitwer: um, And because everyone says to me, my colleagues, my family, my friends, everyone says to me, Why Korea Barbara? What's with you in Korea?
[00:28:30] Jack Wrighton: Right.
[00:28:31] Barbara J Zitwer: They don't get it, and they didn't get, now they get what I'm doing. But, that's after Parasite, Squid Games, The Glory, Pachinko.
[00:28:42] Jack Wrighton: Yeah.
[00:28:43] Barbara J Zitwer: You know, not even the Korean books. I'm talking about Parasite was like, was it for Korea, and Squid Games put Korea over. I think that those two film and TV shows, and also we were stuck at home during COVID, people were discovering other K dramas and going berserk, and that has really driven a lot of people to the books. But, so what happened was, okay, so I wrote this book like three years ago. Why Korea? And it was a third person, and it was much drier about all, you know, it was different chapters, like this, but not as fully fleshed out and everyone turned it down. So, I'm like, okay, you know, fine. I mean, I fulfilled my, I had to, yeah, I had to do it, you know, if I get an idea, I have to do it. So, I fulfilled my need, and then, three years later, this was like maybe a year and a half ago, I got an email from a Dutch publisher, who I know, and she had just moved to a travel publishing company, and she said, that she was looking for, she said, don't you, the first book I want to do is about Korea, and you were telling me about this book you had, and she described this book that she wanted to do, and I was in my apartment, totally crying because my Aunt Ruthie had passed away. She was my favorite person, and my dog Gala. I was completely... I was, I was just, and it was like Christmas. I was like, it was so horrible, and then I get this email from my friend in Holland, and I'm like, I have this book!
[00:30:39] Jack Wrighton: Suddenly a ray of light in the darkness that was happening at the time.
[00:30:45] Barbara J Zitwer: Exactly! And I said, I have exactly the book, so I sent it to her and she bought it right away, and then, so, I was at play, so I started sending it to my co agents. It was sold in Italy instantly also, and, they helped edit it, so they wanted, the book wasn't edited around a travel guide.
It was different chapters about all this information and different themes, but my Dutch publisher wanted like a map of Korea and she wanted me to take the reader to all these like be in your armchair, you don't have to get out, you don't have to get up from your couch, and I will take you to Korea. So I said, okay fine, so I took a map I focused the chapters on a location that I had been to that was remarkable or ones that I want to go to and So the book began to be developed more into what it is now and she wanted recipes in the book. I don't think I had recipes.
[00:31:59] Jack Wrighton: Okay, originally.
[00:32:00] Barbara J Zitwer: And, so she wanted recipes, and I got recipes, and she hired a famous photographer and food writer in Holland to adapt the recipes for the Dutch reader and to photograph them, and the Dutch edition is very different in that it's full color, it has the most gorgeous photographs. If you get to see the Dutch edition, it's magnificent.
[00:32:27] Jack Wrighton: I'll look that up, that sounds fantastic.
[00:32:29] Barbara J Zitwer: It's really, because also all those years, I used to be a photographer professionally, but I do it now for myself, and so I photograph, I have thousands of photographs of Korea. So they wanted photographs and this, and so she cooked the foods and photographed the foods. Now, when it was finally bought in the UK by Short Books, they edited it further into really what it is now, which is a memoir travel guide, and they, it's kind of like a potpourri of history, culture, my experiences, and my editor, Evie dunn, would say to me, okay, put in 35 more personal stories illuminating these things, these themes, like, you're talking about bowing, okay, give us a personal story. So I'm like, okay. Like, I almost knocked myself unconscious first time I...
[00:33:33] Jack Wrighton: Ha ha! You know, like, if you want stories, I've got them. Like, you better...
[00:33:37] Barbara J Zitwer: I have a million very funny stories, because I was really a fish out of water, and when I went there every time I go to Korea, I don't talk to publishers, I meet all my authors, they take me to different restaurants or to places, I read about things, where I want to go, but just to finish this story about the issue of the recipes and the food, so Evie was, you know, encouraging me, put more of your stories in, you know, so it became more a memoir too, and then she's like, we would like you to put recipes in and can you cook the recipes of your favorite foods. Okay, so I told her a story that I love Guinness bread that I ate in Ireland.
[00:34:23] Jack Wrighton: Yeah. Ha
[00:34:24] Barbara J Zitwer: Okay, and I met a film producer who lives in Dublin and I'm like, oh, I love stout bread, Guinness bread.
Can, she said, I have a great recipe. I'll send it to you, but you have to buy the flour and all the ingredients, the brands I tell you because otherwise, you know, you just can't use anything. So, I'm so excited, I find everything on Amazon. I spend like $200 on ingredients for this bread, you cannot believe what a disaster it was.
[00:35:02] Jack Wrighton: Ha ha! Oh no, all that investment and the bread was not...
[00:35:07] Barbara J Zitwer: It wasn't even a bread pudding, it was so gross, it never rose. So when Evie said to me, Can you cook these dishes and photograph them or something? I'm like, there's no way I can cook these. Forget it. I love to eat them. I said, but I could get friends I know and these famous Korean authors to give me their favorite recipes and she said, and maybe they could write a little story about when they served it to you or when they cook it, what it means to you. I said, I love that idea. Brilliant. So, I went, I asked, you know, J. M. Lee, Kyung Sook Shin, Won Pyun Sohn, who wrote Almond, brilliant, is like, that is a best selling book. I mean, well, she sold over 2 million books in Korea and Japan of Almond, and now it was published a few years ago by Harper Via, and it's, the royalties are coming in and it's an amazing book.
Anyway, she gave me a great recipe. So I asked everyone and also Sue, her mother, who lived in Korea right after the war, she was a young woman, a young child. So when I got the stories of my Korean friends and their recipes, I really felt that the book took off to a different level and had a richness to it and each recipe, when you read what the writers write about them, I thought it was so beautiful. Mr. Lee, J. M. Lee, who wrote The Investigation and Broken Summer, is his latest book. He wrote about making scallion pancakes when it rains, and listening to the rain on the roof and the sound of it, like the sizzling of the pancakes in the frying pan and it's only like two paragraphs, but I read it and I said, it's like a novel, it's so beautiful, and I was so blessed to have my author send me these beautiful contributions, and actually, I could make these recipes. That's how easy they are.
[00:37:26] Jack Wrighton: Yes. It wasn't a Guinness bread situation, you thought. I could make these.
[00:37:31] Barbara J Zitwer: Like, I do make ginseng chicken soup. That is the easiest thing, you know, and soy egg rice, which was, Sohn's recipe. I mean, she's a mother. She's written so many books. She just had another baby. She has a young daughter. She's so busy, and her recipe is like, you know, fast food, healthy, homemade Korean style, you know, rice burgers. But this is an amazing story that Sue's mother told about ginseng chicken soup and her recipe and how when she was young, it was after the war and they could not imagine using chicken meat for a soup because people were starving and they used chickens to lay eggs so they could sell the eggs in the market and what it meant to her when she could actually use a real chicken to make chicken soup and I said, Sue, that is... You know, every story, every recipe has a life behind it. It's not like a cooking show. These stories are full of a lot of, I would say, more profound pain and suffering and struggle and really moving and make you also understand the history of Korea and Koreans.
[00:39:02] Jack Wrighton: Well, you set up there, you know, very nicely in the introduction, the dramatic changes that have occurred in Korea, you know, particularly since the war in the last sort of 50 years or so is how much has changed in such a short period of time, you know, we think of it now, you know, everybody's a, you know, my colleague was just talking about how she's getting Korean skincare and obviously cape, you know, culturally it casts a big shadow across, you know, in a good way, you know, across the world, people are really interested in Korean culture, but, and visiting there as well, and we think of these, you know, big, very high tech cities, but actually that's, you know, that's all very recent.
[00:39:44] Barbara J Zitwer: Well, yes, but the thing is, what I love about Seoul and Korea is that along with the high tech, the fastest internet in the world, and the most glamorous, incredible fashion. Sanju Kim is the billionaire genius, maverick entrepreneur who bought MCM and she really brought Korean fashion to the world and her her stores, I mean, she has them all over the world, she was made a dame. I mean, she's an amazing, amazing woman, and she took over MCM, this failing German luggage company, and turned it into a global fashion phenomenon, and she believes, now this is, and she is like at the height of, you know, she was probably at the coronation, and she believes that you succeed to serve. She's a huge philanthropist. She has a foundation, and she, if you see her, she almost looks like a monk. She just, a plain white, crisp white shirt, little necktie, iron jeans, loafers. This woman is a billionaire, and she, what she has done, and when you go to her store, it's like a shrine to handbags and clothes.
It's like, but it's unbelievable, you can't, you know, you can't talk, you can't have a coffee in the store, you know, it's like hermetically sealed. It's unbelievable. So between these so sophisticated and futuristic elements of business and technology, are side by side with ancient, in Seoul, and like, for instance, the huge Buddhist temple in the middle of Seoul. So when you're up in the temple in the mountains, you think you're in the mountains somewhere, but you look across and there are skyscrapers and, you know, the city is in front of you. Things that I think that they really incorporate brilliantly, preserving, honoring, and treasuring their heritage, their culture, their history, into modernity, completely and you know, the first time I went there, one observation, it seems like so obvious and simple, but no women wear high heels. Everyone wears flats.
[00:42:20] Jack Wrighton: Oh, okay.
[00:42:22] Barbara J Zitwer: Every woman is, like, happy, and, like, comfortable.
[00:42:26] Jack Wrighton: That's the secret. It's just, yeah, that's the... get rid of the heels.
[00:42:30] Barbara J Zitwer: Yes, and I'm struggling in my heels, and crippling my feet, and I'm looking around, and it's like the most fabulous, elegant women in these, like, French, Korean, kind of, you know, fabulous design and fabrics. They're wearing sneakers and flats. So, that's my number one. Education and...
[00:42:53] Jack Wrighton: The takeaway is, yeah, ditch those heels.
[00:42:58] Barbara J Zitwer: Ditch those heels. When you go, the design of Korean homes, which I talk about in the book, is that Koreans embrace nature. They don't try to miniaturise it like the Japanese who make these bonsai trees, and they don't wall it off like the Chinese. Wall off nature, they build these huge walls. They embrace it, so when you go to traditional homes or modern homes, there are big picture windows, they let nature be itself. There are many, one of the most famous, Ginseng chicken soup restaurants where all the presidents go, but it's like a joint in a way. It's very famous and it has a huge tree in the middle of the restaurant because they built the restaurant around this tree, you know, so they really revere nature.
There's the stream that runs through Seoul. It's so beautiful, and you know, 30, 40 years ago, some horrible politician decided to paint concrete it over, and thereafter it was ripped up and this stream is so magnificent with areas, walkways and spots for you to read along it and beautiful flowers and vegetation. I mean, it's amazing, right in the middle. So they, they really, the pastime of Koreans is hiking. Of course they hike and burn probably a hundred thousand calories because they love nature and want to be fit, but really it's because they want to have a big lunch.
[00:44:42] Jack Wrighton: Yeah.
[00:44:44] Barbara J Zitwer: Yeah. It's all about the food. It's all about the food. Korea is all about the food. It's all about the food, sharing your food, enjoying your food with family, friends. The food is it's just unbelievable and thing anyone will say to you is, are you hungry? And, so it's a very unique place because it's super modern and it's ancient, very sophisticated.
I think that that's why the writer... And so that's what I found there, and I think they're preserving, they're not over, gentrifying Korea. I think that they're recognising the value of their land and their culture and that this, like when you visit the Hanok traditional village in the middle of Seoul, it's the most magnificently preserved traditional Korean homes.
It's a whole section, like Greenwich Village in New York or Soho in London. You know, this is a whole area. It's all traditional Korean homes. Some of them are owned by people, ordinary people, and there are restaurants, and it's a big tourist attraction because it's like going back in time, and the wonderful pastime, this is hilarious, is that everyone on the weekends, you can rent a Hanbok outfit and wear it and then leave your clothes at the rental shop and walk around and hang out. Yeah, it's like if you were in pachinko or k drama.
[00:46:31] Jack Wrighton: Oh, so just kind of embracing that, you know, that traditional dress and, you know, even if it's not part of daily life anymore, kind of seeing it as a, you know, oh, well, I'll go this weekend and I'll do that and, you know, appreciate your own culture.
[00:46:48] Barbara J Zitwer: Yeah, and people do wear some of these traditional outfits to very important occasions. But there are a lot of clothes that are Hanbok inspired, you know, contemporary fashion. But this was something that I had never seen anywhere. Like I would go to Seoul and in the spring, like Oh my god, thousands of like, young people, old people, all ages are like, walking around in Hanboks, eating ice cream cones, walking through the old village, and taking pictures, and they had a woman, this, I, you would never see this in the West, a woman holding a sign. Please be quiet. This is like a quiet zone, so the noise level doesn't get so loud, and I really appreciate that. I mean, they're very, you know, with all the tradition, and they're very polite and very, you might think, distant, but in a sense, coming from New York, where everyone's in your face all the time, especially in my family!
[00:47:55] Jack Wrighton: Yeah.
[00:47:56] Barbara J Zitwer: It was very refreshing. I learned, you know, I just, it was very calming and respecting that space, and I think sometimes they overdo it in their space and not embracing everyone else in the world, and that's unnerving and frustrating to me in business and working with some publishers.
I'll give you an example. This was totally baffling, but one year I was in Seoul and Han Kang invited me to go to an art gallery to see an exhibit of the white book that she had published. So it was a tiny, tiny like, old art gallery and the exhibit was so beautiful. I mean, it was no bigger than my office, and it was, it was tiny, this gallery, and it was down a little alleyway, it was so beautiful, so profound, and it was during the Seoul Book Fair. So I said to my agent the next day, because her Danish publishers and her maybe French or some other publishers were in Seoul, and I said, you've got to go see this exhibit. Can you give me the address? So I waited for hours and hours, I got no address.
So I said, Joseph, where's the address? Because I want them to be able to go see it, and they're flying tomorrow back to Europe, and it's amazing. He says to me, very difficult, very difficult. So, I'm like, what does that mean? Why do they say very difficult, very difficult? I named one of my chapter titles...
[00:49:34] Jack Wrighton: Yes, yeah, yeah. About...
[00:49:36] Barbara J Zitwer: Very difficult. Why? Why? Why? And it took me years to find out. They don't want to say no. They don't want to disappoint you. They don't want to admit that this is really a messed up situation. So they just don't say anything, and I guess I love figuring out a problem. I love getting to the bottom of things. I just, you know, I need to find I need to find things. I need to find out where things are.
[00:50:11] Jack Wrighton: You need the answers.
[00:50:12] Barbara J Zitwer: I need the information.. I need answers, and, I got them, but it sometimes it took me years.
[00:50:20] Jack Wrighton: Well, you've, I mean, the joy is, and unfortunately I can see, seeing the time, unfortunately we've come to the end of our conversation, but of course you've been through these experiences, so in this book you can say to people, you know, this is the situation, this is what you can expect, and you can give people this sort of wonderful introduction to the thinking, the culture, but also if you are visiting as well.
The book is, The Korean Book of Happiness is, available. It's in our shop, online, or wherever you decide to get your books from. Barbara, thank you so much for joining us on Mostly Books Meets. It's been a pleasure.
[00:50:52] Barbara J Zitwer: A total pleasure. Thank you so much.
[00:50:57] Jack Wrighton: Mostly Books Meets is presented and produced by the bookselling team at Mostly Books, an award winning bookshop located in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. All of the titles mentioned in this episode are available through our shop or your preferred local independent. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our previous guests, which include some of the most exciting voices in the world of books. Thanks for listening and happy reading.