Writing in Pursuit of Meaning

Iranian American novelist and poet grapples with life’s mysteries in his new book

By Ren Brabenec | Jan. 27, 2024

The human race faces infinite unknowns. Every time a question is answered and a mystery is solved, another reveals itself. And while some mysteries are new, others are questions humans have asked themselves since the dawn of civilization. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? What does it mean to make our lives have value and purpose?

“I’ve always been obsessed with meaning,” says poet-turned-novelist Kaveh Akbar. “We have a very brief interval of time on Earth, with the unknowns of eternity that came before us and the even greater unknowns that will continue on after us. Our brief moment on this planet is precious, and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how we can make it count.”

Akbar, professor of English and Creative Writing at Iowa University and acclaimed poet, will take the stage for a National Writers Series conversation at City Opera House on Wednesday, Feb. 7, at 7pm. He’ll be discussing his debut novel, Martyr!, in an exploration of how we spend our lives seeking meaning.

A Foray into Fiction

Akbar has been a poet since his teen years, and he’s often used his poetry to investigate the quandaries of life. He’s the author of several works of poetry, including Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, and is the poetry editor for The Nation magazine, which has published work by luminaries like Sylvia Plath, Langston Hughes, and William Butler Yeats since its inception in 1865.

“I’ve always played with language like a child might play with Legos,” says Akbar, reflecting on his writing journey. “I’ve spent more than half my life as a poet, and to me it’s just always been something I’ve loved to do, moving words around and finding ways to articulate unique and interesting concepts. But I wanted to do something different. It happened that with Martyr!, a narrative sprouted up and it led to a novel and not a poem.”

Martyr! is his first full-length work of fiction. In the book, protagonist Cyrus Shams is an Iranian American poet in recovery from alcoholism and opioid addiction. Cyrus struggles throughout the book with challenges many readers can relate to: deaths in the family, loneliness, and despair.

The novel finds its narrative engine when Cyrus realizes he can counter the weight of his mortality by researching and writing about people who managed to live on in the minds of millions long after they themselves had passed on. He’s compelled to this task by the death of his mother Roya, who was killed in 1988 when the plane she was traveling on from Tehran to Dubai was shot down by the U.S. Navy (an homage to the tragic real-life destruction of Iran Air Flight 655 that same year).

The novel is more than a bit semi-autobiographical, and as you read it, you’ll walk side-by-side with Cyrus as he examines the mysteries and meaning of the past, present, and future.

Advice for Aspiring Novelists

For Akbar, the writing process for his first novel was a lot less glamorous than many make it out to be.

“Hack, hack, hack away!” Akbar says with a laugh, referencing how much of the original draft had to be left on the cutting room floor. “While a finished book looks nice, manicured, professional, and crisp, no one knows what the actual writing process is like until they get into it. And don’t get me wrong, I highly recommend getting into it! But just be prepared for a lot of work.”

Akbar wrote all of the pages by hand. As he described the process and the “thousands of pages that went nowhere,” one can envision a floor littered with paper, the scent of ink in the air, and a man’s body hunched over a desk, fingers cramping, wrist all but immobilized from the strain. “I felt like a documentarian who shoots 800 hours of footage for a 90-minute movie,” Akbar says.

Akbar is honest about the challenge of writing a novel, but that honesty does not dampen the glimmer in his voice when he talks about the adventure of taking his decades of poetry-writing and shifting to authoring a novel. “I spent the last five years of my life in Cyrus’s life, and I’m thrilled I did,” he says.

As someone who just went through the first-book learning curve every aspiring novelist comes up against, Akbar’s experience may be informative for others, and he was happy to share notes:

“First, you have to get really good at cutting things out,” he says. “A lot of authors have this concept of, ‘Well I wrote it for the book, so it therefore must have value.’ Nope! A lot of books end up being too wordy as a result of that viewpoint. Get used to cutting the things out that don’t need to be there, and you’ll be left with a far more fluid, engaging, and interesting story.”

He continues, “Also, be patient. Patience, patience, patience. There’s no shortcut to writing a book. It’s about hours in the chair. It’s about being disciplined and methodical. Be OK with it taking a long time, but do show up to work on it everyday.”

And last but not least: “Finally, read a lot, too! X number of hours spent reading gets you Y better at writing,” Akbar says in closing. “The best writers are also the best readers, and when I was working on Martyr!, I read two novels per week and watched one film per day, all so I could study narratives and how authors and directors compose stories.”

About the Event: This event is presented by the National Writers Series at the City Opera House at 7pm on Wednesday, Feb. 7. Live-stream and in-person viewing options are available. Signed copies of Martyr! will be available, discounted by 20 percent. Tickets can be purchased through the National Writers Series website: nationalwritersseries.org.