Chosen for February 2025 book for Weston’s Novels at Night book club 

After the death of his mother in a real-life 1988 plane crash, Cyrus and his father move from Iran to Indiana. As a struggling writer in his 20s, Cyrus decides to visit an art exhibit in New York City. Along the way, we learn more about his family members in Iran and the United States, and his mother’s journey. The story explores themes of identity, addiction, religion, and other serious topics with humor and poignancy. Kaveh Akbar’s beautiful writing and vivid imagery will stay with me.

“A brilliant and blisteringly alive novel about not just how we go on, but also why. Kaveh Akbar’s first novel is so stunning, so wrenching, and so beautifully written that reading it for the first time, I kept forgetting to breathe. I will carry this story, and the people in it, with me for the rest of my life.” —John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars

“Poet Akbar (Pilgrim Bell, 2021) is an almost deliriously adept first-time novelist, writing from different points of view and darting back and forth in time and into Cyrus’ satirical dreams and the lives of Iranian poets from Rumi to Farrokhzad. Akbar creates scenes of psychedelic opulence and mystery, emotional precision, edgy hilarity, and heart-ringing poignancy as his characters endure war, grief, addiction, and sacrifice, and find refuge in art and love. Bedazzling and profound.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Sublime . . . [Akbar’s] writing makes just enough time for beauty while never languishing . . . although a novel cannot capture what life is, its truths and inventions can powerfully gesture toward what life is like: full of both pain and pleasure, with death inevitable, and love a choice.” —Bookpage (starred review)

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