¡Mártir! / Martyr!

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Kaveh Akbar has written the great American novel, a finalist for the National Book Award and one of the year's ten best novels, according to The New York Times.

A woman dies on a flight shot down by the US military. In New York, an artist turns the final days of his life into a work of art. An Iranian fighter dressed as the Angel of Death rides on horseback among dying soldiers. A widower toils on an Indiana chicken farm to pay for his son's college. A young woman dresses as a man to smoke on the streets of Teheran.

Family ties and twists of fate link these lives to that of Cyrus, a young man obsessed to the point of absurdity with death, martyrs and the meaning of life. But it could be that the eternity Cyrus is searching for doesn't exist and instead, what's truly important lasts only instant.