Award History
| Award | Year | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Dayton Literary Peace Prize – Fiction | 2025 | Winner |
About This Book
Cyrus Shams, an Iranian-American poet in early recovery from addiction, is obsessed with martyrs—people who died for their beliefs, including his mother, who was killed when a US Navy ship shot down an Iranian passenger plane. He begins interviewing Orkideh, a famous artist who has installed herself in a museum gallery to die publicly as her final work. A novel of extraordinary lyrical beauty and emotional devastation. Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction.
About the Author
Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian-American poet and novelist born in Tehran in 1989 and raised in the United States. He is one of the most celebrated poets of his generation and the author of two poetry collections, Calling a Wolf a Wolf (2017) and Pilgrim Bell (2021), as well as the novel Martyr! (2024). Read more →
