Kurdistan +100 : Stories from a Future State : 3

Winner of a PEN Translates Award 2021

Kurdistan + 100 poses a question to contemporary Kurdish writers: Might the Kurds one day have a country to call their own? With 13 stories all set in the year 2046 – exactly a century after the first glimmer of Kurdish independence, the short-lived Republic of Mahabad – this book offers a space for new expressions and new possibilities in the ongoing struggle for self-determination.

Throughout the 20th century, and so far in the 21st, the Kurds have been repeatedly betrayed, suppressed, and stripped of their basic rights (from citizenship to the freedom to speak their own language), seeing their political aspirations crushed at every turn.

In this groundbreaking anthology, Kurdish authors (including several present and former political prisoners) imagine a freer future, one in which it is no longer effectively illegal to be a Kurd. From future eco-activism, to drone warfare, to the reanimation of victims of past massacres, these stories explore the present struggles through the prism of futurism to dazzling effect.

Translated by Amy Spangler, Nicholas Glastonbury, Andrew Penny, Mustafa Gundogdu, Rojin Hamo, Khazan Jangiz, Harriet Paintin, Darya Najim, Dibar Çelik & Kate Ferguson.