MLK Library Literary Book Club

Martyr!

We meet the second Tuesday of every month to discuss a work of literature.

Are you interested in literary fiction and nonfiction? Are you looking for a book club that meets in downtown DC? Join the longest-running book club hosted by DCPL!

For June's meeting, we will be discussing Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. About the book:

Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.

Please send an email to adultservices.dcpl@dc.gov to be added to the group mailing list.

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