Dua’s Monthly Read for September 2026
“The story follows Cyrus Shams, a young Iranian American who is suicidally sad but desperate not to waste his suicide. The long shadow of his mother’s death on Iran Air flight 655 – tragically shot out of the sky by the US military during the Iran Iraq war in 1988 - looms over his life.
“Cyrus is a recovering addict learning to live with his sobriety. In his quest to find meaning and come to terms with the death of his mother, he develops an obsession with martyrdom.
“Martyr! made me think about martyrdom in ways I’d never considered. Yes, Cyrus’s thoughts turn to hunger strikers and those prepared to sacrifice their life for their country. But when he encounters Orkideh, a terminally ill artist living out her final days on display in the Brooklyn Museum, he begins to see the question of sacrifice through an entirely different lens.
“Martyr! fizzes with chaotic energy and a thirst for life that is at odds with Cyrus’s obsession with death. It’s also very funny, with Cyrus playing ‘good person drag’ as a medical actor performing pain for cash, and Lisa Simpson making a cameo in long dream-sequence dialogues.
“This novel is profound, sincere, regularly comedic and quite unlike anything I’ve ever read before.” – Dua Lipa
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