This month on the Service95 Book Club podcast, Dua is joined by award-winning poet and novelist Kaveh Akbar to discuss his debut novel, Martyr! – her Monthly Read for September. It’s a poignant and generous exploration of addiction, identity, mortality and belonging. And one that will pull you in from the very first page.
At the heart of the novel is Cyrus Shams, a newly sober poet struggling to find his footing in life while reckoning with the loss of his mother decades earlier, who was onboard the Iran Air Flight 655 that was fatally shot down by the US Navy. Suicidally sad, he becomes increasingly preoccupied with martyrdom and his deep need to make something of his suffering. His plight leads him to Orkideh, a terminally ill artist ‘performing’ her own death at the Brooklyn Museum, whose decision to spend her final days on display pulls Cyrus to New York.
The episode kicks off with Dua and Kaveh spending time with Cyrus as a character, unpacking the complexity of his motives. It opens up a wider conversation about how we all try to make sense of our own pain and the events that shape our lives, and the ways fiction can help us understand them.
Kaveh also brings up his decision to weave the real-life tragedy of Iran Air Flight 655 into the novel (something we explore further here). By tracing the fallout of one person’s death across the life of another, Kaveh explains how fiction can make the consequences of a historical event feel immediate and personal – taking what he calls “the abstraction of casualty data” and allowing us to see the ripple effects of a single loss. As Kaveh so aptly puts it: “Every person Cyrus talks to, sleeps with, and every drug he does and doesn’t take, is a consequence of [his mother] being on that flight.”
Their conversation also makes space for art, a central thread throughout the novel, and Kaveh’s philosophy around its role in our lives. Drawing on a line from both the novel and the author’s poem The Palace – “Art is where what we survive survives” – they explore why we turn to art in moments of difficulty, and how it can offer hope when life feels insurmountable. (Another artist, Osman Yousefzada, continues this exploration here.)
Keep listening until the very end for some of the most insightful reader questions to date, a glimpse at what Kaveh is working on next and a few more reflections on the making of Martyr! – including what he calls his “narrative diet”.
Whether you’ve read Martyr!, plan to, or still need convincing, when we say this is a conversation worth listening to, we mean it. Rich, illuminating and deeply human, Dua and Kaveh talk about the grief and joy, hope and suffering that can coexist within a single life – and how we learn to hold all of it at once.
There’s More – Delve Deeper Into Martyr! With The Service95 Book Club...
HEAR a playlist picked by author Kaveh Akbar to soundtrack his novel
READ five books that inspired Kaveh Akbar to write Martyr!
DISCOVER the true story of Iran Air Flight 655 – an event that plays a pivotal role within the book
EXPLORE an essay exploring how history an inheritance can live on through art
BOOKMARK ten titles to read when you’re having an existential crisis
