Full review here
Each anthology of near-future fiction in Comma Press’s “Futures Past” series has had a distinctly different flavor. The stories in Iraq + 100, ed. Hassan Blasim, are set in 2103, a hundred years after the disastrous US-led invasion, and many of them map the catastrophic aftereffects of this war. Palestine + 100, ed. Basma Ghalayini, is set a hundred years after the 1948 Nakba, and its authors explore the meaning of occupation, time, and truth. Kurdistan + 100, ed. Orsola Casagrande and Mustafa Gündoğdu, is set 100 years after the short-lived Republic of Kurdistan; many of these stories center the authoritarian erasure of culture and language.
Egypt + 100, edited by author and filmmaker Ahmed Naji and published this month, is set in January 2111, a hundred years after protesters filled public squares around Egypt. In these twelve stories, seawaters rise; people abandon their cities for virtual spaces; Tahrir Square is replaced by a Colosseum where men fight to the death; buildings twist and shift. If there is a shared obsession in this twelve-author collection, it is the nature and meaning of public space.
Read the full article here: ‘Egypt + 100’: Fictions on the Future of Public Space – ARABLIT & ARABLIT QUARTERLY
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