Womrath Book Group -- Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

Join us at Womrath Bookshop for our book group discussion of Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar! Let's dive into this captivating book together and share our thoughts. The event will be held in person at our location at 76 Pondfield Road in Bronxville, NY. Don't miss out on this opportunity to connect with fellow book lovers!

About Martyr!

Electrifying and profound, brazen, profane and often very funny, the first novel from the ferociously gifted young poet Kaveh Akbar heralds the arrival of an extraordinary new voice in contemporary fiction.

Cyrus Shams, the novel's hero, is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: a mother whose plane was shot down over the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident, and a father whose life in America was circumscribed by killing chickens on a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a one-time drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him into the mysteries of his past, toward discoveries that reveal surprising family secrets. Cyrus is guided on his journey by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, and delivered, in the novel's unforgettable final pages, to a world that teems with unforeseen wonders.

Martyr! is a work of gut-wrenching anguish and exquisite consolation—a book that sees into every corner of the human heart, that faces down shame and despair, and emerges with a vision of humanity that is capacious and full of grace: an astonishing debut,

About Kaveh Akbar

Akbar's poems apear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and elsehwere. He is the author of two poetry collections, Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf. He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poems on the Divine. He lives in Iowa City.

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