Kaveh Akbar on his debut novel ‘Martyr!’

NPR’s Scott Simon speaks to writer Kaveh Akbar about his debut novel, “Martyr!”, his debut novel.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Cyrus Shams is both the son of the Middle East and the American Middle West, who’s been instilled with tragedy. His mother, Roya, was aboard Iran Air Flight 655, which was shot down by mistake by the U.S. Navy during the Iran-Iraq War in 1988. He and his father, Ali, wind up moving to Indiana, where Ali works – overworks really – at a poultry farm and dies from a stroke. Cyrus becomes a drunk, drug addict and a poet – not a totally unprecedented combination. But at the age of 30, he is sober, restless and still in Indiana and thinks there might be one path left to deliver himself to a kind of immortality. “Martyr!” is the name of the debut novel from Kaveh Akbar. He’s also poetry editor of The Nation, teaches at the University of Iowa, Randolph College and Warren Wilson College. He joins us now from Iowa City, Iowa. Thanks so much for being with us.

KAVEH AKBAR: Thank you so much for having me, Scott.

SIMON: And that flight, of course, is in the novel, but Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down in 1988, wasn’t it?

AKBAR: It was. It was. It was shot down by the USS Vincennes, a U.S. naval warship. They say that they mistook it for a military plane, and they shot it down. And all 290 passengers on board were killed, including 66 children.

SIMON: Does Cyrus feel doomed or spared?

AKBAR: I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. I think one can feel doomed and spared – doomed to the same ineffable resting place that awaits us all and also spared from dying of addiction, from dying aboard that flight with his mother. So both.

SIMON: Cyrus has a poetry project in mind. Is he hoping that will deliver meaning or immortality or what?

AKBAR: Art is a mechanism by which people have sought immortality for millennia. The idea that we could store our intelligence in our stories, in language – meaning in each other – outside…