Margaret Atwood is the first author invited to participate in the Future Library, a time capsule of culture built in Norway last year that won’t been seen until 2114.
The Canadian author is adding her manuscript to the time capsule next week and to mark the occasion, she published some thoughts on Wattpad about the who experience. Check it out:
As a child, I was one of those who buried treasures in jars, with the idea that someone, some day, might come along and dig them up. I found similar things while digging in the various gardens I have made: old nails, old medicine bottles, fragments of china plates. Once in the Canadian arctic, I found a tiny doll carved of wood – rare wood, for no trees grow there and such a piece of wood must have been driftwood. That is what the Future Library is like, in part: it will contain fragments of lives that were once lived, and that are now past. But all writing is a method of preserving and transmitting the human voice.
The novel is part of The Future Library project, spearheaded by Scottish artist Katie Paterson. The project organizers planted 1,000 trees in Norway to supply the paper to print a collection of books in 2114. They plan to invite one writer a year to contribute a new text and print all of the books in 100 years.