Amitav Ghosh to bury manuscript for 89 years as part of Future Library Project

Amitav Ghosh has been named as the 12th writer to contribute to the century-long Future Library Project, following in the footsteps of authors including Margaret Atwood, Ocean Vuong, Han Kang and Elif Shafak. Ghosh will submit his manuscript in May/June 2026.

The project was conceived by Scottish artist Katie Paterson, and invites one writer each year to contribute a manuscript that will remain unpublished and unread until the year 2114. The texts are stored in a specially designed silent room at the Deichman Bjørvika public library in Oslo until 2114, when the full anthology will be printed and released using paper made from trees planted in the Future Library forest.

Amitav Ghosh grew up in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, and holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oxford. He is the author of nine novels, four works of non-fiction and two collections of essays. His books have received numerous awards and honours, and have been translated into more than 30 languages. 

In 2018, he became the first English-language writer to receive India’s highest literary honour, the Jnanpith Award. In 2024, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Ghosh said: “To be invited to participate in the Future Library Project is both a profound honour and a humbling act of trust. The Future Library compels us to think beyond our lifetimes, to imagine readers who have not yet been born. It is particularly significant for me that the project has a forest at its core, because for a long time now, I have been writing about a forest, albeit of an entirely different kind: the great mangrove forest known as the Sundarban.

“It will be an exciting challenge to make a connection between the forests of the far north and those of the tropics, at this time of extreme planetary crisis. I am moved to be part of a work that intertwines ecology, literature and patience on such a monumental scale.”

The Future Library Trust selected Ghosh for his “deeply resonant literary voice and his longstanding engagement with themes of ecology, history and time.”

On behalf of the trust, artist and founder Katie Paterson said: “Amitav Ghosh’s writing is expansive, urgent and deeply attuned to the shifting ground of our world. His stories traverse oceans and centuries, revealing how the climate crisis is inseparable from histories of empire, migration and myth. With a rare ability to weave the intimate with the planetary, the visible with the invisible, Ghosh gives voice to the forces – human and more-than-human – that shape our shared future. We are honoured to welcome him to Future Library, where his words will be held in trust for the generations to come.”