What is the Future Library in Oslo with books to be read in 2114?

Would you write a book knowing that it would not be published when you were alive? That only people of the future will read this, 100 years from now, in a different world? When to English writer David Mitchell (author of map of clouds) was proposed, he thought it was madness. But then he joined the allure of the project. This is the Future Library, a library designed by Scottish artist Katie Paterson: the books collected at this place will not be read until 2114Only then will they be printed and can be borrowed and read.

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Patterson started this cultural project in 2014 and realized it because of the financial support of a foundation and the Oslo administration, as they say Post, The idea is to collect, each year, for a hundred years, an unpublished manuscript of an author or international author that can only be read in the next century. The books are kept in the “Silent Room”, a special room at the Deichmann Bibliotek in Oslo and made of wood from an area of ​​the Nordmarka forest., There, in 2014, Patterson planted a thousand spruce trees, so in about ninety years, those same trees could be used to make paper on which to print a hundred manuscripts. In a time of environmental crisis we are experiencing, it is an idealistic as well as disturbing gesture: what will the world be like in 100 years? It aims to encourage a reflection on the role of humanity through the passage of time and, consequently, to inspire an evaluation of human impact on the planet in the long run.

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Patterson explained that the library would welcome “writers of any age and nationality, of any genre and genre or set of genres, and of any language”. Everyone will be able to decide the length of the text with which they will contribute to the initiative and only the title of the book and the name of the author will be shown in the Room of Silence where the manuscripts will be kept in glass drawers. Margaret Atwood was the first writer to write a short story for Library of the Future in 2014.author of ilu story of maid, “It was my dream that Atwood would write for the Future Library,” said Patterson, “I imagine his words growing in the trees, an energy never seen before, activated and materialized, and the trees The rings became chapters in books.” He was followed, among others, by the Icelandic poet Sojan, the Turkish writer Elif Shafak and the South Korean writer Han Kang. Atwood likens these futuristic books to small objects that children hide as treasures and hope that someone will find them by chance. “This project,” he told Ali Guardian“If nothing else, he believes the human species will still be around a century later.”