Shaheryar Malik emptied his apartment of books by leaving them in huge heaps in public spaces across Manhattan. Why did he do it – and what happened next?

Imagine getting rid of your entire library and starting afresh. This is exactly what Shaheryar Malik has done, in as dramatic a manner as possible.

About a year ago, he decided he would leave stacks of about 40 of his books in several public spaces in New York until he was left with none. Eight times over, he piled them up in places such as the Brooklyn Bridge, the High Line or a subway platform, and just walked away.

He has no idea what happened next, nor does he want to, as the whole point of this experiment was to avoid a digital trace (beyond one photograph for each stack).

He wanted the experience to be reserved for those who were there at that very moment, he explained. The books ranged from everything from novels to gardening guides to photography and the fall of the Third Reich to fiction. He would put the tomes with the most unusual titles on top, such as The Decision Book: 50 Models for Strategic Thinking, or Physics for You, which has “such a beautiful illustration on the cover”, he says.

This started a year ago, when Malik, an art director originally from London, walked over the Brooklyn Bridge and got the urge to take a selfie. “Then I stopped and thought: ‘Instead of taking the picture that has been taken millions of times, I’m going to share something different with the world.’

“A book moves you, touches you, annoys you. You’re on the Brooklyn Bridge, how about you transform yourself by travelling to this other world?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Times Square station, NYC. Photograph: Daniel Yim

Would people ignore the stacks, bump into them, see them as pile of rubbish? He has no idea what the immediate reactions have been, because he doesn’t stick around. “I’d be really anxious if I did.” However, he did leave bookmarks with his email address inside the books, and he has received more than 60 emails from people in 30 countries so far.

Now with empty shelves, he feels “lifted”. “I have given away something, but I’ve never really left them. What you’ve read becomes you and stays in you, and now they carry on and get extra lives. A woman in Holland said she’d left it on a train there for someone else to pick it up.”