Introduction

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • ATIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR • A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

“Kaveh Akbar is one of my favorite writers. Ever.” —Tommy Orange, Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of There There

“The best novel you'll ever read about the joy of language, addiction, displacement, martyrdom, belonging, homesickness.” —Lauren Groff, best-selling author of Matrix and Fates and Furies

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.

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Discussion Questions

From the publisher:

1. In an interview with NPR, Akbar said “art is a mechanism by which people have sought immortality for millennia.” Do you agree with his statement? How does this relate to Cyrus’s journey?

2. Does Cyrus’s conversation with Orkideh change his view of martyrdom? Discuss.

3. The title of the book includes an exclamation point. What tone did this set for you before you began reading the book?

4. Author Kaveh Akbar is an award-winning poet. How do you see his talent as a poet influence his writing in Martyr!?

5. Akbar based Roya’s death during a real-life event— the destruction of Iran Air Flight 665 by the U.S.S. Vincennes in 1988. Afterwards, her widower and child immigrate to the United States, the same country that was responsible for the tragedy. How do you think this shaped the trajectory of Ali and Cyrus’s lives?

6. How do you perceive Cyrus’s imagined conversations between fictional characters? Who would you put into an imaginary conversation together and why?

7. How has survivor’s guilt affected Cyrus throughout his life? Does he feel doomed or spared?

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