Han Kang’s manuscript set to be unsealed in 2114 gets renewed attention

Author Han Kang's unpublished manuscript which has been sealed and locked away in Oslo, Norway is getting renewed attention following her Nobel Prize in literature win.

The manuscript is shrouded in mystery -- its content, length and format unknown -- only its title, “Dear Son, My Beloved,” has been revealed.

The manuscript is part of the Future Library art project launched by Katie Paterson in Norway in 2014. Each year, a writer is invited to contribute a manuscript that explores the themes of imagination and time. The completed manuscripts are stored at the Deichman Library in Oslo. In 2114, 100 years after the project’s launch, the curators will print the texts -- unseen by anyone until then -- for the first time.

Han was the fifth writer and the first Asian writer to participate. Contributors include renowned authors such as Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell and Karl Ove Knausgard.

In May 2019, Han visited Norway to deliver the manuscript and wrapped it in a ceremonial white cloth traditionally used in Korean rites for newborns or as a mourning robe for funerals.

“It was like a wedding of my manuscript with the forest, or a lullaby for a century-long sleep, softly touching the earth all the way,” Han said during the handover ceremony.

Given that Han has a son, there is speculation that the work may contain her message to humanity regarding the present and future, framed as a letter to her son.

"It felt like a prayer for the future," Han said about the project during a talk at the Seoul International Book Fair in 2019, describing it as “an act of uncertainty about a future where we will all be gone.”