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Spec Fic Book Club - KURDISTAN +100

  • Lost City Books 2467 18th Street Northwest Washington, DC, 20009 United States (map)

Speculative Fiction will be meeting on Wednesday April 30th at 7 pm; we will be reading Kurdistan +100, edited by Orsola Casagrande and Mustafa Gündoğdu.

About the book:

Kurdistan +100 poses a question to thirteen contemporary Kurdish writers: might the Kurds have a country to call their own by the year 2046--exactly a century after the last glimmer of independence (the short-lived Kurdish Republic of Mahabad)? Or might the struggle for independence have taken new turns and new forms?

Throughout the twentieth century (and so far in the twenty-first), the Kurds have been betrayed, suppressed, stripped of their basic rights (from citizenship to the freedom to speak their own language) and had their political aspirations crushed at every turn.

In this groundbreaking anthology, Kurdish authors (including several former political prisoners, and one currently serving a 183-year sentence for his views) 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 resuscitation of victims of past massacres, these stories explore different sides of the present struggle through the metaphor of futurism to dazzling effect.

Featuring: Qadir Agid, Yıldız akar, Selahattin Demirtaş, mer Dilsoz, Muharrem Erbey, Nariman Evdike, Ava Homa, H seyin Karabey, Karzan Kardozi, Sema Kaygusuz, Jahangir Mahmoudveysi, Meral Şimşek, and J l Şwan.Translated by: Amy Spangler, Nicholas Glastonbury, Andrew Penny, Mustafa Gundogdu, Rojin Hamo, Khazan Jangiz, Harriet Paintin, Darya Najim, Dibar elik, and Kate Ferguson.