Book Review — Martyr! A Novel by Kaveh Akbar

Genre: Literary Fiction
Published by: Knopf
Publish date: January 23, 2024
Number of pages: 352 pages
Author’s website: https://kavehakbar.com/
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Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which 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 is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran 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.

Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction

Rating: 5/5

An experimental and beautiful tale of grief, martyrdom, and love. I’ve read Kaveh Akbar’s poetry and there is a poetic element to how he tells this story of Cyrus. There are multiple aspects of this novel that I loved. I loved the honest way Cyrus’ addiction and journey to sobriety is addressed. I loved how we get almost novella-like backstory of both Cyrus’ parents prior to their respective deaths. I loved the conversations about martyrs and death that Cyrus has with a painter in her final days. I loved witnessing the relationship between Cyrus and his friend. It’s a book that will urge you to take the time to digest and get lost in the imagery. The reader will go on a journey of little ways we remember those we have lost and what we do to honor them.