Margaret Atwood will release a new novel in the year 2114.
The 74-year-old Canadian author is the first person to contribute to Scottish artist Katie Paterson's The Future Library project. One writer will contribute a text to the collection each year, and the works will all be published in 2114. Paterson planted a forest of 1,000 trees in Nordmarka, Norway, specifically to provide the paper for the published manuscripts.
"It is the kind of thing you either immediately say yes or no to," Atwood told the Guardian. "I think it goes right back to that phase in our childhood when we used to bury little things in the backyard, hoping that someone would dig them up, long in the future, and say, 'How interesting, this rusty old piece of tin, this little sack of marbles is. I wonder who put it there?'"
Atwood is an award-winning novelist who published her first book, The Edible Woman, in 1969. Her best-known works include The Handmaid's Tale, Cat's Eye and The Blind Assassin, and she has also released 15 books of poetry. The author predicts readers in 2114 might need "a paleo-anthropologist to translate" her book due to the evolution of language, but said she isn't bothered by the fact she won't hear any reader response in her lifetime.
"Wild horses would not drag it out of me," she said of her contribution's subject matter. "I'm finding it very delicious, because I get to say to people like you [the Guardian], 'I'm not telling.' But I will say that I've bought some special archival paper, which will not decay in its sealed box over 100 years."