Martyr!
by Kaveh Akbar
If you’ve led a meaningless life, can you still have a meaningful death? Kaveh Akbar weaves this question throughout his novel of love, abandonment, sobriety, and redemption. Orphaned Iranian immigrant Cyrus Shams lives in Indiana and struggles with addiction and purpose. Newly sober, he becomes obsessed with martyrdom; he considers suicide and dreams of contemplative conversations between his mother and Lisa Simpson, or his imaginary brother Beethoven and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Cyrus’s obsessions lead him to an Iranian artist in New York whose final installation piece is to let people ask her questions at the Brooklyn Museum while she awaits her death from terminal cancer. Many of his beliefs — both philosophical and corporeal — are upended. Akbar’s writing, while far from narratively linear, is lively and engaging, offering far more questions than the 350-page book can answer. You’ll be thinking about Cyrus and his search for meaning long after you’ve finished the book.
The Fatal Shore
by Robert Hughes
Winner of both the Duff Cooper Prize and the W.H. Smith Literary Award, The Fatal Shore is a fascinating account of England’s colonization of Australia as a penal colony during the 18th and 19th centuries. Most offenses that led to banishment from England were levied against men of the lower class, who were shipped across the world to a land filled with new food sources, unique animals, and unexpected dangers and told to build settlements. The unjust penal conditions, reinforced class distinctions, and clashes with Aboriginal Australians helped shaped the continent into what it is today.
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
by Deesha Philyaw
The title is no metaphor: This multi-award-winning compilation comprises nine short stories that explore the multilayered challenges and hidden desires of church-going Black women across four generations. From the stirrings of a teenage crush to the extravagancies of a serial adulteress, Deesha Philyaw crafts a mosaic of intimacy, shame, loss, and love that exposes the often wide gulf between our public personas and who we really are, cast against the backdrop of the expectations of the church. These stories challenge traditional ideas of race, parenting, and sexuality in thought-provoking but ultimately satisfying ways.
This article is featured in the September/October 2025 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. Subscribe to the magazine for more art, inspiring stories, fiction, humor, and features from our archives.
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