Kaveh Akbar

"A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum"-- "Cyrus Shams, the novel's hero, is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: a mother whose plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident and a father whose life in America was...