Fun Fact: The library taking 100 years to literally grow its books

100 trees have been planted and in 100 years time, 100 unread, unpublished novels will be printed on paper from the trees. 

The Turkish novelist Elif Shafak is to follow Margaret Atwood, David Mitchell and Sjón as one of the 100 contributors to the Future Library, an art project that will only be seen by readers in 2114, when the spruce trees to make its paper have been fully grown.

Dreamed up by the Scottish artist Katie Paterson, the Future Library is, in Paterson’s words, “a living, breathing, organic artwork, unfolding over 100 years”. Starting in 2014, each year Paterson has approached a writer to contribute a manuscript to the project, with the texts to remain secret until 2114, when the trees in Oslo’s Nordmarka forest, planted as 1,000 seedlings in 2014, will be chopped down, the paper made and the manuscripts finally printed.