Kaveh Akbar

An unexpected second chance: American cult author Kaveh Akbar is coming to The Hague for a one-time performance.

His interview at the last Crossing Border Festival was canceled at the last minute due to personal circumstances. A huge disappointment for many attendees, and certainly for us. It had the potential to be one of the festival’s big surprises.But now it’s happening after all!

Kaveh Akbar (1989) was born in Tehran, Iran, and moved to the United States at the age of two. He now teaches at the University of Iowa. He previously published the poetry collections Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, as well as the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic. His poems have appeared in publications such as The New York Times and The Paris Review. At BorderKitchen, Akbar will discuss his debut novel Martyr!.

Cyrus lives in a small room in a shared apartment, with a pile of dirty laundry and overdue library books as his only possessions. In the empty hours since giving up alcohol, he spends most of his time thinking about writing, and not doing it, while meditating on the deeper meaning of his Iranian heritage. What he really wants is to die. To achieve the ultimate martyrdom. It’s in the Iranian nature, he claims. Wandering through life, he hears about the Iranian artist Orkideh, who is performing Death-Speak at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. She is spending her final weeks and days in the museum as she dies of cancer, engaging in conversations with visitors. This is what he needs. He boards a plane to New York, but the conversations he has with Orkideh don’t bring him closer to death, they bring him closer to life.

There will be a signing session afterward. His book (Dutch/English) will be available for purchase at the event.