Martyr!: A novel

Written by Kaveh Akbar

Narrated by Arian Moayed

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 Furies

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 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Jan 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9780593824566

Kaveh Akbar

Kaveh Akbar has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes for his poetry, and his collection Pilgrim Bell was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Poetry. He is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, and his work has been featured in The New Yorker and The Paris Review, on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week and Front Row, on The New Yorker Radio Hour, and in The Kindergarten Teacher starring Maggie Gyllenhaal. His debut novel, Martyr!, was a New York Times bestseller and a most anticipated book in 2024 for TIME, NYLON, Oprah Daily and Marie Claire. Born in Tehran, he lives in Iowa.

Reviews for Martyr!

[Gil Raff · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Magnificent reading by the narrator. Discussing this book for my book club. Half the members couldn’t make their way through the book but I relished every delectable morsel. So many characters —flawed and ambitious and deeply feeling. Complicated in a good way. Not difficult to keep up with the characters. Knowing them in their own thoughts made them come to life in a breathtaking way.

[cnicoles05 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I would put this book under "it's complicated" in the dictionary. I didn't think a book called martyr would be light, but I was expecting the sort of intricate and twisted darkness that I found. There are so many thought provoking questions that I want to read it again, but the melancholy tone is overwhelming. With discussions of suicide, war, grief, and substance abuse, this book is a lot. That said, if your in a mental space where you can withstand the torrent of sadness, I think it's worth reading.

[tangledthread · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Cyrus is a 27 year old recovering addict who is obsessed with having a meaningful death. His father brought him to the US as an infant after his mother was believed to be killed when the US Navy shot down a civilian Iranian passenger plane.

The narrative explores feelings of abandonment, alienation, grief, gender fluidity, and a longing for love. The prose varies between stream of consciousness writing, poetry, dream sequences, and some narrative of Cyrus' family members.

This was not an enjoyable read for me. I can see it's value, but it's not for me.

[deslivres5 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Was this all just a fever dream?
So many lovely vignettes (different timeframes and different perspectives) build into this crescendo of Cyrus and his quest to research/write a book about martyrdom. Audiobook narrated by Iranian-American actor Arian Moayed was fab! Overall tone was melancholy, but with some great philosophical zingers and quite a few chuckles, especially the last couple of chapters.

[jscape2000 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When your main character is a poet who doesn't write poetry named Cyrus Shams, you're probably writing a satire.

But Akbar's Martyr! hits too hard, too earnestly to be satire. It is a comic novel about death, suicide and substance abuse in the way that Slaughterhouse Five is a war novel. There are funny stretches and laugh out loud moments. But what sticks is the revelations, the lies that Cyrus cannot see through. Like so many lonely men, he drifts through life until he is exactly where he needs to be.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Reason read: not sure why i read it, but definitely not the book for me. Author is Iranian American. It explores grief, addictions, racism, martyrdom, as well as other things. There were different lines that I liked but mostly did not enjoy reading this one.

[bibleblaster · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I devoured most of this novel in a day and was completely engaged with the story, characters, narrative voice...So many profound, humorous, and beautiful reflections and observations, all delivered in an unpretentious, unassuming way through the character's stories, that I gave up trying to record them all...Highly recommended.

[ccayne_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Akbar packs it all in and it works, beautifully, quite an accomplishment. I started this book when it first came out and was turned off by the opening chapter. I'm very glad I gave it another chance. Although the themes are not unusual, Akbar's treatment of them sets this novel apart. It feels emotionally real.

[nivramkoorb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a novel with good reviews so I wanted to know about an Iranian character. Cyrus is a young man living in Fort Wayne Indiana in 2017. He was born in Iran but came to the US as baby. His mother was on the commercial plane that our Navy shot down in 1988. After that his father immigrated to the US with Cyrus. He spent 18 years working in a chicken factory. Cyrus floats in out of the present as he recounts his father who died when he was 18. The book was well written with wonderful prose but it was a little hard to follow. Cyrus, who is sober in the present, recounts his past addictions. Akbar is creative in using dreams and the other characters in the book to add texture and away from Cyrus self -centered character. A plot twist made the last 100 pages more enjoyable and saved the book for me. A worthwhile first novel and a way for American readers only read US writers to get a better global perspective by reading. more foreign authors.

[muddyboy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A really unique and thought provoking novel in which the protagonist is a young Iranian American writer who is more focused on having a meaningful death as opposed to a meaning life. He learns about a woman artist with terminal cancer who has a "living" art piece at a museum where patrons are encouraged to converse with her during her demise. The main character is captivated by her and develops a close relationship with her. A very well written novel.

[technodiabla · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this is audiobook format.

This novel is about a young man, an Iranian-American recovering addict, who seeks purpose while lamenting his losses. When he visits an art installation, the artist clarifies some things for him and for the reader. This is a much lauded book, but I didn't care for it. I felt the main character was a self-centered loser who spent way too much time whining and blaming everyone but himself for his sorry life. There was basically no plot until the last quarter of the book. The secondary characters' backstories were the most interesting parts. I think the author was trying to say something important about life and death, but the message didn't really get through.

[alexrichman_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Struggled to see what the fuss was about really. Fine, but a little too much writer writing about writing for my liking. And frankly (SPOILER ALERT) the ‘conceptual artist back from the dead’ was pretty well done in The Family Fang.

[vive_livre · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

2.75

This book is kinda overhyped. The story wasn't all that engaging to me. However, it's ambitious for a first novel. Although it seems clunky n certain ways but isn't afraid of tackling large subjects. The book is about a self-absorbed character realizing that he is not able to fill the emptiness he finds in his life and much of the book is a meditation upon life, death, purpose and meaning. The fragmentation of the narrative and it's perspectives as well as a shifting timeline kept it from becoming dull but it had a ridiculous twist at the end that I found maddening.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Living happened until it didn't. There was no choice in it. To say no to a new day would be unthinkable. So each morning you said yes, then stepped into the consequence.

Cyrus immigrated to the US with his father when he was a baby. He was raised by a depressed single father who worked at a chicken farm and died soon after Cyrus graduated high school. Cyrus stayed in the Midwest for college and stayed in the same town after graduation, doing the same low-paying jobs he'd done in college and mainly drinking and taking drugs and not writing. After he gets sober, he's still not writing but he's not writing about the lives of famous martyrs, fascinated by their meaningful deaths.

I do like a sad sack doomed poet type, so I was predisposed to like this book, but it's also beautifully written. Akbar is a poet, and it shows in the word choices and how he can do so much in very few words. The novel centers Cyrus, but it's also about his absent family, with chapters told from the point of view of his mother, father and uncle, all of whom have fascinating stories to recount. And Cyrus also has a good friend, Zee, and a sponsor at AA who cares for him and sticks with him despite their differences. This is a novel that plays with language, moves around with some chapters leaning towards humor, and builds into a novel with a great deal of heart. I really loved this book and I'm looking forward to Akbar's next novel.

[booklove2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

"Art is where what we survive survives."

This is another one of those books that seem to be so many random bits and pieces of things together. First, this is a book heavily about poetry and addiction, and a book with either one of these topics will probably never be a book that hits best with me. It was also hard for me to separate character from author, as I know this is semi-autobiographical... Cyrus is a bit of an ass. I really wanted to think better of the writer than I was of the character! Eventually Cyrus notices he is self-centered, which means the author also notices it. But I'm glad that Cyrus is not the main focus here -- the narratives do feature some other people connected to Cyrus. I think most of the other characters will be more memorable for me. As dreams feature a lot in this book, overall the book itself seems like a complicated set of dreams, and upon waking, you're not quite sure how they all fit together, but you know it was probably brilliant at the time. I just didn't connect with this book as much as I wanted to. I would set this on the shelf beside 'Call Me Zebra' by Azareen van der Vliet Oloomi, 'Country of Origin' by Dalia Azim and 'The Blazing World' by Siri Hustvedt (but probably because this one was a recent read for me and there are some connections.)

[cherybear · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I couldn't get into it. Cyrus is a young man who is obsessed with martyrs. He writes poetry, and is writing a book. But he wants to be dead, and his life to mean something--he wants to be a martyr. His parents are both dead, and his mother's death especially had a profound effect on him. He learns of an artist who is dying, and is "staging" an installation at a museum--she will live there, and die there, and will spend her time talking to visitors, about life, death, whatever they like. Cyrus goes to see her.
Some of the chapters are narrated by other characters. Some are actually dreams.
The dying artist, Orkideh, plays a huge part of the novel.
I just didn't get it. It's weird.

[ozzer_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

True to his name, Cyrus Shams thinks his life may just be a pointless sham. He grieves for his parents who have died senselessly. He is a minority attempting to belong in a racist society. He is a poet struggling with the inadequacies of language and art to represent life. His coping strategies are not working for him anymore (e.g., substance abuse, sexual experimentation). His life seems empty, and depression has left him toying with suicidal thoughts. He fixates on martyrs and martyrdom as ways to have a death that matters. Remarkably, Akbar takes this sad sack with all this baggage and makes him a truly likeable character. If a bit jaded, Cyrus is also earnest, humorous, and intelligent. Akbar brilliantly uses his protagonist to explore a broad tapestry of provocative ideas, including death, psychic pain, grief, alienation, addiction, multiculturalism, racism, capitalism, and love.

A meandering narrative primarily is told from Cyrus’ perspective, but also includes sections narrated by his parents, his uncle and various friends, including his AA mentor and Zee, his best friend and sometime lover. Akbar also includes conversations with various celebrities imagined while Cyrus struggles with insomnia. However, the story gains its footing with the chapters about Orkideh, an Iranian-American painter obsessed with her own art. She has terminal cancer and has decided to end her life talking to strangers in an installation she calls “Death-Speak” at a Brooklyn Museum. Cyrus gets wind of this and decides to visit with her to discuss his doubts about his own art, death, martyrdom.

Clearly, this is a novel of ideas—maybe too many. Yet Akbar gives us a coherent narrative. Despite the multiplicity of voices he employs, his characters are believable and nuanced. The final plot twist will undoubtedly be the most memorable feature of the novel for most readers, but some may find it a bit too much of a stretch to be believed.

[wellred2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The story of Cyrus, a twenty-something poet who wonders why he is alive and wants to make his death, and thus his life, mean something. Thoughtful and has some really good twists,

[kayanelson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very thought provoking book. Cyrus lives his life thinking that his mother died in a terrorist attack on an airplane. His father raises him and dies also. Cyrus is finally a recovering alcoholic who has strokes of genius in viewing and writing about the world. He is fixated on martyrdom. The book goes back and forth between narrators and time periods but it flows really well. Because of my time schedule it took me longer to read this book than it should have. I may have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t lost the flow.

[brianinbuffalo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

4.25] This moving debut novel was penned by a poet I was unfamiliar with until I saw him in an interview on PBS. Akbar is a skilled word merchant who has managed to create a work that is creative, oftentimes hilarious and impressively thought-provoking. I had high hopes during the first third of the book that it might land on my sparsely populated 5-star list. Sadly, it sagged a bit at the midway point. But the stunning conclusion and overall originality of Akbar’s work earns it a high rating. One of the most riveting subplots involves the young protagonist’s struggles with substance abuse. During the televised interview, the author confided that his addictions to alcohol and drugs in his 20s nearly destroyed him. There’s no doubt that his firsthand experiences helped him to brilliantly chronicle the challenges of addiction. During the interview, Akbar said writing his first novel was “thrilling,” adding that he studied an eclectic selection of narratives in an almost maniacal fashion. This poet’s maiden voyage into fictional waters will entertain, enlighten and impress readers.

[archangelsbooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Extraordinarily beautiful and tender! A gorgeous book. What a journey.