It's "delicious": Margaret Atwood just wrote a book, but you won't be able to read it for a hundred years.

Are you a Margaret Atwood fan? Are you at least 1-year old? Odds are you'll never read at least one book she's written.

Atwood--winner of the Man Booker Prize (and probably a Nobel Prize some year)--is the first author to sign up for The Future Library project, an endeavor created by Scottish artist Katie Paterson which aims to have 100 authors write books that will be sealed away, unread, until the year 2114.

Further adding a level of complexity to it all, Paterson just planted 1,000 trees in the Norwegian town of Nordmarka, just outside Oslo, which will spend the next century growing--before being felled--and used to create the paper on which the 100 books by 100 authors will be printed on and, hopefully, read by someone, anyone.

Atwood takes great glee in being a part of the whole project, telling The Guardian, "What a pleasure [...] You don't have to be around for the part when if it's a good review the publisher takes credit for it and if it's a bad review it's all your fault. And why would I believe them anyway?"

All works created for the project, including Atwood's, will be placed in a special room planned to open in 2018 at the Deichmanske public library in Oslo. The books will be on display for attendees to view, but not to read. A printing press will be included in the room, to be used in case printing presses cease to exist by 2114.

But Atwood really won't give a hint at what she wrote? "Wild horses would not drag it out of me," she tells The Guardian. "It's part of the contract you can't tell anybody what you're writing. I'm finding it very delicious, because I get to say to people like you [the Guardian], I'm not telling."

But she does offer one nugget of information. "I will say that I've bought some special archival paper, which will not decay in its sealed box over 100 years."




photo: Bjørvika Utviklingay, via The Guardian