Martyr!

Have you ever felt adrift, searching for meaning in a world that feels both too loud and too empty? Imagine finding a purpose so profound you'd do anything for it. This is the journey of Cyrus, a man wrestling with addiction, family history, and a desperate need to matter. Discover how Cyrus's obsession with martyrdom leads him from rehab in the Midwest to a museum in Brooklyn, and finally to the deserts of Iran. You'll explore the complexities of faith, the search for belonging, and the haunting question of what makes a life, or a death, meaningful.

Kaveh Akbar is a Whiting Award-winning poet and a professor at the University of Iowa, whose work often grapples with themes of addiction, faith, and belonging. Born in Tehran, Iran, his lived experience as an immigrant and his journey through recovery profoundly inform his writing, lending a raw, unflinching honesty to his exploration of the human condition. His debut novel, Martyr!, extends this powerful inquiry into the complexities of obsession, art, and what it means to live a life of purpose.