Martyr!

Books | Fiction / Literary

3.3

Kaveh Akbar

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR • A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.“Kaveh Akbar is one of my favorite writers. Ever.” —Tommy Orange, Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of There There“The best novel you'll ever read about the joy of language, addiction, displacement, martyrdom, belonging, homesickness.” —Lauren Groff, best-selling author of Matrix and Fates and FuriesCyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.

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More Details:

Author

Kaveh Akbar

Pages

352

Publisher

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Published Date

2024-01-23

ISBN

0593537610 9780593537619

Community ReviewsSee all

"Cyrus struggles to find meaning, purpose in his life so that his death will mean something, unlike his mother’s senseless death when she was a passenger on a commercial flight that was shot out of the sky. Reminders that we all survive life with the support of family and friends that become family. And one good twist. I’ll be thinking about this one for awhile!"

Jackie Davidson

"There is no real way for me to describe how strange and beautiful this book truly is... The words flow across the page poetically, but the book is structured in an Avant Garde way so that when the two styles combine you are left with this heartbreakingly real story that feels a little disjointed while you’re reading it. The book centers on an Iranian immigrant, and recovering addict, in Indiana named Cyrus Shams. Cyrus has lost both of his parents. His mother’s plane was accidently shot down by the Americans when he was a baby, and his father passed away shortly after he started college. Cyrus finds himself alone in the world and searching for meaning. He is struck with this belief that his death must mean something and be meaningful to the world, since both of his parent’s deaths meant nothing to the world. He decides to write a book that will focus on martyrs, people whose deaths meant something, in the hopes of finding the purpose of it all. To help him get his life moving his friends tell him about an artist in residence at a museum in New York with a piece called Death Speaks. The artist is dying and will live out her last days in the museum talking to visitors about death. His friends believe that this is the meaning in death that Cyrus is looking for and encourage him to travel to New York. His grief and obsession with death lead him into a short-lived friendship with the artist that will change his life, and the world, forever. <br/>With such heavy subject matter, you would think this book with be a depressing slog, but there are moments of humor, beauty, anger and joy wrapped into the story that makes the soul feel a little lighter after reading. Yes, I cried but I also think that was the point of this book. Grief isn’t something you just get over, there is no fancy way to skirt around the sad parts. Grief is disjointed and messy, and ultimately as meaningless as death. It is love that gets you through and in the end this book is about love. If you want to feel all the emotions and to live a life that isn’t yours then this book is the perfect book for you. I think this book is an amazing debut and I can’t wait to see what Kaveh Akbar will bring to the book world in the future."