Kurdistan+100 is out today, published by Comma Press. This is both a book and a challenge. The editors, Mustafa Gündoğdu and Orsola Casagrande, asked the 13 contributing Kurdish writers to imagine what Kurdistan will look like by the year 2046, exactly a century after the first glimmer of Kurdish independence, the short-lived Republic of Mahabad.

In each of their stories, the writers were invited to negotiate with both the past and future. 

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.

The book features the following writers: Qadir Agid, Yildiz Cakar, Selahattin Demirtas, Omer Dilsoz, Muharrem Erbey, Nariman Evdike, Ava Homa, Hüseyin Karabey, Karzan Kardozi, Sema Kaygusuz, Meral Simsek, Jahangir Mahmoudveysi and Jîl Şwanî.

The book, winner of the PEN Translates Award 2021, was translated by Amy Spangler, Nicholas Glastonbury, Andrew Penny, Gündoğdu, Rojin Hamo, Khazan Jangiz, Harriet Paintin, Darya Najim, Dibar Çelik and Kate Ferguson.