David Mitchell, a regular contender for the Man Booker literary prize, is used to his novels being picked over by the critics. So, it’s something of a relief, says the British author, that his latest work – completed at 1am one Tuesday morning before a car arrived to take him to the airport to catch a flight to Norway – won’t be seen by anyone until 2114. Mitchell is the second contributor to the Scottish artist Katie Paterson’s Future Library project, for which 1,000 trees were planted in 2014 in Oslo’s Nordmarka forest. Starting with Margaret Atwood, who handed over the manuscript of a text called Scribbler Moon in 2015, each year for the next 100 years, an author will deliver a piece of writing that will only be read in 2114, when the trees are chopped down to make paper on which the 100 texts will be printed. Each author – their names revealed year by year and chosen by a panel of experts and Paterson, while she is alive – will make the trek to the spot in the forest high above Oslo, where they will surrender their manuscripts in a short ceremony. “It’s a little glimmer of hope in a season of highly depressing news cycles, which affirms we are in with a chance of civilization in a hundred years,” said Mitchell. “Everything is telling us that we’re doomed but the Future Library is a candidate on the ballot paper for possible futures. It