Orso

Orso: Wartime Journals of an Anarchist contains the first-person narrative of Lorenzo Orsetti—also known as Heval Tekoşer Piling, now Şehîd (martyr) Tekoşer—an internationalist soldier in Rojava. It was published in its original Italian following his death.

This first English edition from Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness includes additional essays and a preface by James Stout, sharing the historical and cultural context in which Orso lived, fought, and died, bringing his message to a new audience. The struggle against Daesh for an autonomous, liberated region in Rojava is bigger than one person, but one person’s life can offer us a glimpse of a vast project and how one life can fit into it.

Praise for Orso

It’s through our devotion to each other that we, all of us, live forever. This memoir is a story of the everyday bravery that not only defeated the Islamic State but proved that a better world is possible and within our grasp.

—Margaret Killjoy