Embracing Our Differences: “Martyr!” by Kaveh Akbar

Join us for community conversations about diversity & inclusion!

This Fall, we’re reading and discussing National Book Award finalist Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar.

From Penguin Random House: “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.”

Copies of the book are available for checkout at the Library’s circulation desk. Pick up your copy any time the Library is open!

Registration is appreciated – please click here to register.