Han Kang buries new manuscript in Norwegian forest until 2114
Novelist presented the Future Library manuscript wrapped in a ceremonial cloth as used in South Korean rites marking birth and death
Instead of launching her latest work in a bookshop surrounded by readers, the award-winning South Korean novelist Han Kang dragged a white cloth through a Norwegian forest before wrapping it around her manuscript, which she handed over to be locked away for 95 years.
Han is the fifth writer to have been chosen for Scottish artist Katie Paterson’s Future Library art project, following novelists Margaret Atwood and David Mitchell. Paterson is asking one writer a year to contribute a manuscript on the themes of imagination and time. In 2114, 100 years after the project’s launch, 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.