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Iowa poet hits best-seller list with his first novel “Martyr!”
The debut novel from a University of Iowa creative writing instructor has cracked the New York Times’ best-seller list and Kaveh Akbar will headline the Celebration of Literary Arts in the Des Moines metro today.
The book “Martyr!” is fictional but follows the true-life 1988 American downing of an Iranian passenger jet that killed 290 civilians. The main character is the son of a woman who was killed in the crash. Akbar peppers the tragedy with humor.
“This is a serious book about international relations and death and martyrdom and art, but it’s also a book that has long dialogues with Lisa Simpson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar,” Akbar says, “and hopefully it’s funny. I mean, it’s not for me to say, but I certainly laughed when I was writing it.”
The 35-year-old was born in Tehran, Iran, to an Iranian father and an American mother. They moved to the U.S. when he was two, eventually settling in Wisconsin. Akbar says his first passion was poetry, and he strives to make his writing echo his constantly-ranging emotions.
“I’m not interested in making art that feels relentless or like a sermon, right?” Akbar says. “I hope it feels like life, which is to say, often pulverizing and often rapturously joyful.”
Akbar is returning to Iowa this week as part of a national book tour, and to start his third year of teaching at the UI, where he’s director of the English and creative writing major. “Martyr!” was said to be on former President Obama’s summer reading list and it’s winning wide critical acclaim.
“The attention that’s been paid to it, hopefully, means that it’s finding the people for whom it might be useful,” Akbar says. “That’s the great ambition of my art, I guess, is that it will find its way into the hands of people who I’ll never meet, who might be able to find some value in it. Everything is in service of that. It’s the most gratifying thing in the world to an artist to know that that’s happening.”
The author is to speak at 11:15 this morning on the Ankeny campus of Des Moines Area Community College as part of the 22nd annual Celebration of Literary Arts. Akbar says he’s looking forward to hearing from Iowans.
“I have spent a lot of time around this book, sort of talking about myself, so I’m always much more interested in talking about other people and what they’re wondering and curious about,” Akbar says. “My hope is that it will be more of a conversation and less of me pontificating from on high. But of course, you know, I’m happy to read from the book a little bit and speak to the audience and just sort of think about things together.”
Akbar is also scheduled to speak at 7 tonight at Beaverdale Books in Des Moines.
