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A new work of fiction by Hari Kunzru, best known for his novel Gods Without Men, will be at the centre of an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum next year.
Kunzru, usually published by Penguin imprint Hamish Hamilton, has written a piece of fiction to be released by V&A Books in June 2013, alongside an exhibition at the South Kensington Museum. The project is designed to explore the relationship between format and meaning, and present the book as a three-dimensional experience.
Kunzru's story is described as "a dark vision of a future in which not just books but remembering itself is banned, and a small group of renegade memorialists is all that stands in the face of total oblivion". The narrative comes from the point of view of an imprisioned member of that group. An essay by the exhibition’s curators, Laurie Britton Newell and Ligaya Salazar, will accompany the text, with specially commissioned work by Robert Frank Hunter and drawings from artists featured in the exhibition.
It will be released as a £12.99 hardback on 25th June, at the same time as the start of the exhibition. Editor Philip Contos said the book would appeal to Kunzru fans as well as those with "an interest in the relationship between visual arts and the written word". Contos said it was necessary to commission a new piece of work for the project as that "allowed for it to be created and finalised in a collaborative way."
He added: "It is important that the book is a beautiful object—both as a record of the exhibition and also as a book that people will want to pick up and read."