Saturday March 9, 6pm
264 Canal Street, 3W
New York, NY 10013

Please join us on Saturday, March 9th, for a reading by poet Kaveh Akbar, author of the acclaimed new novel Martyr!, followed by a discussion with critic Anahid Nersessian.

The painful absurdities and insoluble contradictions that attend the life of the immigrant provide the occasion for Akbar’s debut novel. Martyr! is the story of Cyrus Shams, a young man born in Iran and raised in Indiana by his father. When Cyrus was an infant, his mother was killed aboard Iran Air Flight 655, a passenger flight brought down by a pair of surface-to-air missiles fired by the USS Vincennes, an American Navy cruiser, on July 3rd, 1988. Cyrus, now an alcoholic in recovery, is desperate for his own life to matter. He becomes obsessed with the idea of martyrdom, constantly adding to a file on his computer called BOOKOFMARTYRS.docx…

For an amuse-bouche, consider this earlier encounter between Kaveh and Anahid, which appeared in Bidoun some weeks ago.

With thanks to Triple Canopy for hosting.