Growing up, Nymiduni, interview with Kaveh Akbar, most recently

the author of the fantastic debut novel, Martyr. If you haven't heard of this book by now,

I will be very surprised because it's been in New York Times bestseller. It shows up on so many

best of lists. And not to mention, the cover of the book is so hard to miss.

It's this beautiful yellow cover with this awesome illustration and it has an exclamation point in the

title, which is rare for a book title. But I absolutely love this book about a young man named Cyrus

Shams. So we share a last name, and it's about Cyrus's journey

in basically researching and writing about the concept of martyrs. It's about a lot more than that,

but that's one part of it. Cyrus is Iranian American, and he lost his mother to flight 655, which was

an Iranian airliner shot down by the U.S. Navy in 1988, a mistake that no one has

ever been held accountable for, let alone the U.S. government. This one event has tremendous

repercussions in Cyrus's life, which takes place in the U.S. mostly. But the book is full of so much that many of us

in the diaspora can relate to, and I really can't recommend it enough. I had so many questions for

Kave. I really couldn't fit them all into this one interview, but I loved our conversation,

got so much out of it, and I hope that you do too.

So with no further ado, my interview with Nimrudu Kauve-Akber.

First, Kauve, thank you so much for talking with me today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited that we get to do this.

Yeah, me too. And I'm glad that I'm glad kind of that it's taken us so long to talk because my questions

have just been building and building and building.

If you see the notes that I have for this discussion, it's just, it's all over the place.

And really, like, I emailed you the other day because I was like, I need to talk to you because so much has been happening over.

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