Man Booker-winning South Korean writer Han Kang submitted her latest work to the Future Library where it will be locked and kept unseen for the next 95 years. Kang wrapped the manuscript with a white cloth, symbolic of birth and death in the Korean culture, which she earlier dragged through a Norwegian jungle.
Kang did this as she was the chosen writer for Scottish artist Katie Paterson’s Future Library art project. For this project, Paterson asks a writer every year to contribute their work on the topics of imagination and time. These works will then be kept in the new Deichman Library, which will open in Oslo in 2019. The idea is to store these works in a specially designed room which is lined with wood from the forest and to keep them there for 100 years after the project's official launch. Post which, 'in 2114 its curators will cut down the 1,000 Norwegian spruces that were planted in 2014, and print the texts – unseen by anyone until then – for the first time,' reads a report by The Guardian.
Han Kang's manuscript is titled
Dear Son, My Beloved. Explaining the reason for wrapping her latest work in a white cloth, she said that according to Korean tradition a white cloth is used for making gowns for newborn babies or for making a mourning robe in funerals. “It was like a wedding of my manuscript with this forest. Or a lullaby for a century-long sleep, softly touching the earth all the way... So, this is time to say goodbye," she further said, according to The Guardian.
Nothing more is known about Kang's work which is submitted to the library.
It's noted that Kang is the fifth writer to be chosen for this project. Other novelists who have contributed to it include Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell.
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