Saturday, September 06, 2014

Margaret Atwood's new work will remain unseen for a century

Novelist says it is 'delicious' to be first contributor to the Future Library, which will compile 100 texts for publication in 2114

Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood: 'Books really are a message in a bottle.' Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

Depending on perspective, it is an author's dream – or nightmare: Margaret Atwood will never know what readers think of the piece of fiction she is currently working on, because the unpublished, unread manuscript from the Man Booker prize-winning novelist will be locked away for the next 100 years.
Atwood has just been named as the first contributor to an astonishing new public artwork. The Future Library project, conceived by the award-winning young Scottish artist Katie Paterson, began, quietly, this summer, with the planting of a forest of 1,000 trees in Nordmarka, just outside Oslo. It will slowly unfold over the next century. Every year until 2114, one writer will be invited to contribute a new text to the collection, and in 2114, the trees will be cut down to provide the paper for the texts to be printed – and, finally, read.
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