Martyr! Study Guide

Kaveh Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran, and his family immigrated to the United States when he was two years old. They moved frequently, and Akbar spent time in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Indiana. After getting a bachelor’s degree at Purdue and an MFA from Butler University, Akbar when on to get a PhD in creative writing from Florida State University. Soon afterwards, Akbar began publishing poetry, with collections like his chapbook Portrait of an Alcoholic receiving praise for the way they drew on his own experiences with addiction. His full-length poetry collections, Calling a Wolf a Wolf and Pilgrim Bell, established him as a leading contemporary poet. During the pandemic, Akbar began work on what would become his first novel, Martyr!, which was published in 2024 and listed in many publications as a book of the year. Akbar currently teaches at the University of Iowa, and he is married to fellow poet Paige Lewis.

All of the events of Martyr! take place in the shadow of the Iranian Revolution, which occurred in 1979, about a decade before the birth of Cyrus (who was born around the same time as author Kaveh Akbar). While the causes and effects of the revolution are complex, it primarily involved the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s monarchical government by an Islamic cleric named Ruhollah Khomeini. The Shah was known for his nationalistic policies, which included promoting the old king Cyrus the Great as a symbol of Iranian identity—giving Martyr! protagonist Cyrus his name. But while the Shah was skeptical of Western influence in Iran, Khomeini—who became known by the title of Ayatollah—took an even harder line against what he considered Western imperialism, remaking Iran into a theocratic, Islamic country. Although Khomeini was popular in parts of Iran, many have accused him of leading a cult of personality, and some of his policies—such as instituting the death penalty for homosexuality—have faced harsh criticism. In 1980, Iraq under Saddam Hussein launched a preemptive attack on Iran, partly out of fear that Iran’s revolution could prompt a similar revolution in Iraq. The Iran-Iraq War lasted throughout much of the 1980s. Khomeini died in 1989, but his blueprint for Iran as an Islamic theocracy more or less survives to the present day.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! makes several references to the writing of 13th-century Persian poet Rumi (the Masnavi), even including Rumi as a character in a dream sequence. Main character Cyrus Shams takes his last name from Shams Tabrizi, an important inspiration for Rumi who suddenly disappeared one day, leading some to believe Shams was martyred. The novel The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak similarly portrays a fictionalized version of Rumi and explores how his poetry still has an effect on the present. The character of Roya in Martyr! is a fan of the Iranian poet Forugh Farrokhzad (“Let Us Believe in the Dawn of the Cold Season”). Her poetry was noteworthy for its experimental style, which clashed with Iran’s often-conservative culture (being banned temporarily after the Revolution), an experience that the character Roya could certainly relate to. Farrokhzad’s sudden death at age 32 in a car crash also ties into the novel’s theme of mortality. Another popular depiction of the Iranian revolution is the graphic novel Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. In the acknowledgements of Martyr!, Akbar thanks fellow writers Tommy Orange (There, There) and Lauren Groff (Arcadia). Like Akbar, Orange and Groff write in a contemporary literary style that takes some inspiration from modernism and post-modernism (such as having multiple, shifting plotlines and points of view), but which also contains some conventional storytelling elements, such as strong plots. This subgenre of literary fiction is sometimes called “book club” or “upmarket” fiction, to distinguish it from more niche and experimental forms of literary fiction.