Kaveh Akbar: Finding meaning in sobriety and writing his bestseller, Martyr!

Bookends with Mattea Roach

Iranian American writer Kaveh Akbar and his novel Martyr! are everywhere these days. Martyr! made the New York Times bestseller list and several summer reading lists, including Barack Obama's. Drawing on Kaveh's own experience with addiction and recovery, it's about Cyrus, a 20-something Iranian American poet who’s in the early years of sobriety. Cyrus is a little lost…and a lot depressed…and he becomes interested in the stories of historical martyrs. In this very first episode of Bookends, Kaveh speaks with Mattea about how his own journey inspired the novel.