Novelist Han Kang Has Published a New Book, but It Won’t Be Read Until 2114

South Korean novelist Han Kang has finished her latest book, but you’re going to have to wait a while if you want to read it. Kang’s new novel is being donated to the Future Library project, which was created in 2014 by artist Katie Paterson and collects an original from popular writers which will remain unread until 2114. The novels include themes on imagination and time and each manuscript is stored in a specially designed room made with wood from the forest in the new Deichman Library, which opens later this year in Oslo. Once the project reached its 100th birthday, the curators will chop down the 1,000 Norwegian Spruces that were planted in 2014 and the novels will be read for the first time.

As The Guardian reports, the project’s organisers said:  “No adult living today will ever know what is inside the boxes, other than that they are texts that will withstand the ravages of time.”

The novel is called Dear Son, My Beloved, Han and it’s author dragged a white cloth through the Norwegian forest before wrapping it around her manuscript. In Korea, a white cloth is often used as a dress for newborn babies, or as a robe for 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,” said Kang “So, this is time to say goodbye.”

Kang won the Man Booker Prize in 2016 for her novel The Vegetarian which received critical acclaim upon its publication. However, the author remained tight-lipped when it came to her latest work. “If it is possible to call prayer the moment when, in spite of all the uncertainty, we have to take just one step towards the light, in this moment I feel that perhaps this project is something close to a century-long prayer,” she said

The first author to donate a novel to the project was Margaret Atwood in 2014. Her’s was called Scribbler Moon and, of the project, she said: “there’s something magical about it. It’s like Sleeping Beauty. The texts are going to slumber for 100 years and then they’ll wake up, come to life again. It’s a fairytale length of time.” She continued: “I am sending a manuscript into time. Will any human beings be waiting there to receive it? Will there be a ‘Norway’? Will there be a ‘forest’? Will there be a ‘library’? How strange it is to think of my own voice – silent by then for a long time – suddenly being awakened, after 100 years. What is the first thing that voice will say as a not-yet-embodied hand draws it out of its container and opens it to the first page?”

David Mitchell was 2015’s contributor with his novel From Me Flows What You Call Time. Icelandic writer Sjón contributed As My Brow Brushes On The Tunics Of Angels or The Drop Tower, the Roller Coaster, the Whirling Cups and other Instruments of Worship from the Post-Industrial Age and Elif Shafak added The Last Taboo in 2017, each of these works were submitted the following year, respectively.