An admirer of Shakespeare, Thoreau and Emerson, financier and philanthropist Michael B. Kim began writing as a way to make sense of the world and believes every journey is worth telling.
Offerings is Kim’s literary debut and a national bestseller. Of the 18–year writing process, Kim told Publishers Weekly, “I started writing the book many years ago. But I thought it propitious, in a time of political and cultural conflicts amid economic globalization, for a story to come out about ‘offerings’ — attempts to forge connections between the West and Asia, between business and family, and between father and son.” When asked why he chose fiction, he answered, “The power of metaphor.”
Kim is writing his second book, which he describes as a “traditional folktale with a twist.”
Released in 2020, the nearly 300-page novel Offerings presents an in-depth portrait of protagonist Dae Joon, a U.S.-raised, Harvard Business School-educated Wall Street investment banker. Dae Joon, along with his international finance team, is at the forefront of helping South Korea recover from sovereign default during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-1998. The story depicts Dae Joon’s return to his homeland, where he endures challenges and triumphs in personal and cultural identity, morality, friendship, business, and love — all while navigating an economic collapse.
In his interview with Publishers Weekly, Kim shared, “My hope is that readers will be able to wring out from a specific environment certain universal truths that go beyond time and place.”
Malcolm Gladwell, the New York Times bestselling author of Outliers, Blink, and The Tipping Point, says of Kim’s book, “Offerings is a beautifully wrought coming-of-age story of a young man torn between art and commerce, conscience and obligation, Korea and the United States. I loved it.”
Gary Shteyngart, author of Lake Success, celebrates Offerings, declaring, “A potent combination of a financial thriller and a coming-of-age immigrant tale, Offerings is a great book. A thoughtful and engrossing read.”
Writer Elizabeth Cobbs, the bestselling author of The Hamilton Affair and The Tubman Command, noted of Offerings, “In clean, elegant prose, Michael Kim plumbs the complicated world of international finance — and the universal longing of fathers and sons not to disappoint one another. Offerings is the engrossing tale of an immigrant’s troubled return home.”
To learn more about Michael B. Kim, follow him on LinkedIn.