Why a Booktrail?
1980s – 2017: A dying artist leads Cyrus towards the mysteries of his past
Martyr!
What you need to know before your trail
Cyrus Shams is lost.
Ever since his mother’s plane was senselessly shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was just a baby, Cyrus has been grappling with her death. Now, newly sober, he is set to learn the truth of her life.
When an encounter with a dying artist leads Cyrus towards the mysteries of his past – an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as an Angel of Death, a haunting work of art by an exiled painter – he finds himself once again caught up in the story of his mother, who may not have been who or what she seemed. As Cyrus searches for meaning in the scattered clues of his life, a final revelation transforms everything he thought he knew.
Travel Guide
Brooklyn and Tehran
The locations are only loosely used and there is no real sense of location in the novel apart from to set apart the life one of the characters leads in Tehran and then life in Brooklyn.
This novel looks at racist capitalist necropolitics of America and the American empire. The necropolitics of Iran are also explored. Necropolitics is a sociopolitical theory of the use of social and political power to dictate how some people may live and how some must die
There is a queer artist who suffers from addiction so beware of that.
Cultural references include Marina Abramović – a Serbian conceptual and performance artist. Her work explores body art, endurance art, the relationship between the performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.
BookTrail Boarding Pass: Martyr!
Destination: Brooklyn, Tehran Author/guide: Kaveh Akbar Departure Time: 1980s – 2017
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