Han was resolutely positive about the future of printed books and literature. Despite the growing dominance of YouTube and electronic books as mediums for conveying information, printed books and novels will survive and take back their dominance, she predicted. “Some say a new era of augmented reality is approaching, but augmented reality (technology) cannot bring us into the inner mind or even into the soul of other people,” she said. “That kind of augmented reality in fact resides in books and literary works,” she said, adding, “In the end, printed books and literature will come back because literature is dealing with ever-changing human subjects like life, death, pain, love and grief.”

The 49-year-old writer is currently authoring the third and final part of a new trilogy with snow as its theme. She confessed that she is experiencing a major roadblock over the project. “It might be because I am struggling to write these days, but writing a novel is like going along a road that is very, very narrow — narrow like thread,” she said. “But you have to find the very narrow path. If you fall off the path even very slightly, (the novel) is no longer truthful and becomes mundane,” she said. “So I am struggling to write, telling myself that there is indeed a very narrow path, and I have yet to find it.” Han recently contributed a new novel, “Dear Son, My Beloved,” to the Norwegian public arts project “Future Library” as the fifth writer to do so after authors that include David Mitchell and Margaret Atwood. The novel by Han and 99 other renowned authors will be compiled, kept in secret and published a century late on paper made from the trees of a special forest cultivated for the project.

By Park Boram

(Yonhap)