Martyr!

Kaveh Akbar, an Iranian-American poet, turned to the novel with the story of Cyrus Shams, a queer poet in Indiana who is newly sober after addiction to alcohol and drugs. When Cyrus was a baby, his mother's plane, Iran Air Flight 655, was shot down over the Persian Gulf by a U.S. Navy missile, and his father, a migrant worker on a chicken farm, has died. Drawn to the idea of martyrdom, Cyrus is writing a book of martyrs. He hears about Orkideh, an Iranian performance artist, terminally ill, whose final days are being passed at the Brooklyn Museum. Published in 2024, it was a finalist for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize.

Dua Lipa chose it for her Service95 Book Club, praising its chaotic energy and hunger for life, which pull against Cyrus's fixation on death, and calling it very funny.