Our partner podcast Novel Dialogue invites a novelist and a literary critic to talk about novels from every angle: how we read them, write them, publish them, and remember them. This season’s signature question is: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be, and why?

An unforgettable horse gallops through the pages of Kaveh Akbar’s bestselling novel Martyr! (2024), but it is a figurative hastening toward failure and the limitations of language that Akbar discusses with critic Pardis Dabashi. In their conversation, Kaveh considers writing both as an escape from the confines of the self and as a vehicle for expressing its contradictions. Together they explore which forms might best capture the ambivalence and polyphony of the human mind, the contours of Iranian American identity, and the spiritual beauty of everyday existence. Whether discussing neurolinguistics or the affordances of poetry, Kaveh contemplates the limits of language: How can we write what we think, when we struggle to know what—or how—we think? This conversation goes deep into the psyche in order to reach far beyond it. Even Kaveh’s deeply personal response to the signature question demonstrates that the places farthest away from us may also be found within.

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View a transcript of the episode here.

Mentioned in this Episode

By Kaveh Akbar:

Also mentioned: