Martyr!: A Novel

by Kaveh Akbar

New

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Book Club, Contemporary, Audiobook, Queer, LGBT

Paperback

First published January 23, 2024

About the author

Kaveh Akbar's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Tin House, PBS NewsHour, A Public Space, Guernica, Boston Review, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is also the founder and editor of Divedapper, a home for dialogues with vital voices in contemporary poetry.

His first full-length collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, was published in 2017.

Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran and currently lives in Iowa. He was a visiting professor at Purdue University in Indiana in Fall 2017.

Reviews

[fatma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought Martyr was going to be a literary no-brainer for me, a novel that I wouldn't even have to think about because it was pretty much guaranteed that I'd love it. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

I want to start by saying that Martyr is not a bad novel, but rather an unsuccessful one (to me at least). My fundamental issue with it is that it feels like a collection of parts rather than a cohesive whole. Its parts feel disjointed, out of step with each other, not quite amounting to a narrative that feels effective or purposeful. To me, the novel was missing those interstitial parts that make a sequence of chapters feel like a story rather than just...a sequence of chapters. We get chapters from Cyrus's POV, chapters from his father's POV, chapters from his mother's POV, chapters where Cyrus dreams up conversations between characters and historical figures, and I think, put together, those POVs didn't particularly work. It's not that I'm opposed to these kinds of POVs, or to multiple POVs in general, but more that I didn't think the novel gave them enough time and space to feel fleshed out. The result being that they felt like pit stops in the narrative, interruptions that jolted the book's main plot rather than additions that felt necessary to, and interwoven with, that main plot.

Structure aside, I did appreciate this novel's attempts to explore certain ideas; thematically--though not stylistically--it reminded me a little of The Idiot + Either/Or by Elif Batuman. Both are very much rigorously existential novels: where Batuman's novels question particular templates by which we're expected to live (heteronormative relationships, the either/or of living an aesthetic vs. ethical life), Martyr is interested in the question of how to give life meaning through death--its central focus being, of course, martyrdom.

I said I appreciate Martyr's attempts to explore this topic, but that's exactly it: it attempts, but it doesn't succeed. I could tell what the novel was trying (very, very hard) to do, and I could also tell that its attempts were not bad, but ultimately those attempts missed the mark for me. And critically, where a novel like The Idiot is sustained by Batuman's incredibly sharp and wry writing, the writing in Martyr is not strong or distinct enough to sustain its similarly cerebral and introspective story.

Martyr is a novel that has so much potential, and yet never comes together. I started it expecting to love it--it seemed, by all accounts, like just the kind of novel I'd love--and finished it confused because all those things I'd expected to love were present in the writing but not effectively written. The writing is fine but not equal to such an internal story (I was expecting a lot from the writing given that the author is a poet but it didn't really wow me), and the story itself felt scattered and underdeveloped. Altogether, I was left pretty disappointed by this one.

[Jack Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martyr! is the kind of book you never forget reading. I wish I could wipe my brain clean and read it again for the first time.

But, then again, I'm also grateful to now be equipped with the vocabulary to explain big philosophical ideas in palatable ways. This book carefully considers themes of grief, martyrdom, sobriety/addiction, family, apathy, social/cultural identity, and so much more. It's hard to explain the plot - or even the structure, which is marvellously fluid - but I think that's the beauty of it. Ultimately it's a book about morality and mortality, following an Iranian man whose parents have both died (one in a plane crash, one by subsequent suicide) negotiating the concept of death. He hears about an artist in Brooklyn who is spending her final days (she has been diagnosed with cancer) sitting in a museum and talking to visitors about anything they choose, and decides he'd appreciate her company.

While this book contemplates big ideas, Kaveh Akbar also isn't shy about confessing that sometimes we DON'T KNOW the answer. Sometimes there is no straightforward solution or explanation. That's part of the human experience, too, this not knowing.

What I do know is that this book was an easy 5 star read, and one I'll be returning to again and again and again.

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

too many cool people have loved this too much for me to not want to read it.

so i am not surprised to agree with the popular opinion on this one.

i've put off writing this review for 4 months (instead of my usual 1-2) because i'm not sure what to say that hasn't already been said, 900 times and also better.

this really is a remarkable book, beautifully rendered and searing. it's as one of a kind, striking, and resonant as everyone says it is. i've found myself loving the novels of poets lately, because while i still struggle with poetry itself their prose tends to be understated and stunning. this is no exception.

i will say i found this to have some very debut-y moments in spite of its brilliance. it's maybe a little bit more uneven than generally indicated, with, yes, strokes of genius and also some stumbles, slightly more frustrating than i expected it to be.

but honestly, that only serves to make me more excited to read more from this author. the best is yet to come.

bottom line: no one needed me to say this book is good, but. this book is good.

[♑︎♑︎♑︎ ♑︎♑︎♑︎]

I probably need to read this a third time.

[Kaileigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The prose! You can tell it’s written by a poet! But the plot? You can tell it’s written by a poet!

[Zoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

unhinged pick for inflight reading

[Hannah Azerang · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is, without question, one of the best books i’ve ever read

[chai ♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this gorgeous, generous, perfect book and want to have 6 different conversations about it all at once. The acknowledgment section trails into a note that ambushes me with even more love and gratitude: “Reader, your attention—a measure of time, your most non-replenishable resource—is a profound gift, one I have done my best to honor.”

[Shawn McComb · Rating 5 out of 5]

YUP YUP YUP💛⭐️🌻🌝🌼🐥🧀⚠️🍯🚕🧈

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘In heaven, opportunity costs,’ wrote Kaveh Akbar in his poem The Palace. It is the concept of martyrdom, that sacrifices must be made—the laying down of one’s life for a cause—but in exchange is eternal glory. It is also the existential question at the heart of Martyr!, Akbar’s debut novel, as the young Cyrus’ journey towards sobriety is also an internal quest to consider how one’s own death might serve to better illuminate a life now given in sacrifice. For a book about death, depression and an aching for understanding, it never feels downbeat as Akbar uplifts the wandering narrative with wry humor and whimsicality and a sense that, in the grand scheme of things, grace outshines the bleakness of rage. It is an ambitious and multifaceted work where not every element quite sticks the landing, though in keeping with the sense of grace, these aspects are easily overlooked by the power and beauty of the whole. As intricate and layered as his poetry, Akbar’s Martyr! and Cyrus’ searing self-journey is an excellent existential investigation into addiction in the face of mental health, identity in the face of history, and life and legacy in the face of death.

‘I just want to write an epic. A book. Something about secular, pacifist martyrs. People who gave their lives to something larger than themselves. No swords in their hands.’

Kaveh Akbar has emerged as an icon of modern poetry in recent years. His first full-length collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf (a book that, like Martyr! deals heavily into addiction and the struggles towards sobriety), completely floored me when it came out and I ended up rebuying it twice after being so insistent someone read it that I’d give them my copy. Beyond his own poetry, Akbar has been such a shining light of advocacy for modern poetry, founding Divedapper as a home for modern poets to interview each other and share their voices, writing the weekly column Poetry RX for The Paris Review, and publishing his recent anthology The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine. Here we have Cyrus also compiling an anthology of sorts, spending the duration of the novel on his “The Book of Martyrs” of ‘people who at least tried to make their deaths mean something.’ He too, hopes to become a martyr for art and complete the work with his own suicide.

Akbar’s grounding in poetry shines even in this first long-form fictional release with a narrative that isn’t directionless, persay, but wanders into various narratives, mingles with history to crack it open and extract ‘the hidden voice’ inside, or occasionally diverts into abstraction. It reads as less confined as a typical novel and more in the boundless freedom of a poetry, though the habit of often remaining in metaphorical language and cashing in on frequent references works better in his poetry than prose. Still, I enjoy the frequent insertions of Cyrus’ documents or poems and quotes from real news articles to better fold the historical elements into the work.

This was a deeply moving work. Akbar taps into dark territory to present it with a lightness of humor and grace that bears the fingerprints of having been there themselves. The way something dark can be spoken of with a laugh that isn’t barbed with offense to those who experience it but instead a laugh in the face of it, because you’ve confronted it, locked eyes, and survived. For the sake of sensitivity, readers should know that this deals heavily in themes of depression and suicide, but I found it to be profoundly moving. It also felt familiar. Cyrus reads like a lot of people I’ve known, the sad art types, the sort of people I’ve often been especially when I was 19 of 20 and grappling with darkness myself. The sort of darkness that pushes a lot of people into drink, drugs and poetry like Cyrus. It can be difficult to read at times.

‘ What formed in Cyrus's mind was a blunt and inarticulable plea to be done, for a reprieve from navigating what had become to him an unnavigable world, to not have to spend the next decade or decades unraveling what it all meant, had meant, would mean. The anger he felt at his mother. The vanished. The abandoner. But, also, the pride he felt for her, now. The great artist. It was too much. He prayed for an end to the tyranny of all symbols, beginning with language…

He understood, with a clarity that had until that moment in his life eluded him, that he was not at all made for the world in which he lived, that art and writing had gotten him only trivially closer to compensating for that fundamental detectiveness, the way standing on a roof gets one only trivially closer to grabbing the moon than standing in the dirt.’

It’s the sort of introspective work that reminds you of hard times, the ones you might try to make art out of. The kind that finds you pleading with yourself internally, ‘ forming a prayer not exactly in language.’ What really works is that, for having a lot of universiality, it is also highly specific and culturally informed. It’s something many can relate to, but also respect as not their own and an opportunity to listen and learn. I really appreciate Akbar for sharing it with us all.

‘To say no to a new day would be unthinkable. So each morning you said yes, then stepped into the consequence.’

Family and identity play a large role here and are often looked at in context of the history of conflict. Cyrus’ mother was killed in the real-life murder of Iranian Flight 655 when the US navy launched missels at the passanger aircraft in 1988. All aboard were killed yet Cyrus escaped the disaster as he was left behind for being deemed too young for the flight. Quite a heavy burden to bear while watching one’s father sink into alcoholism and dead-end labor in the aftermath, all but inevitably leading to Cyrus’ own struggles with addiction. Elements such as this and the martyrs of Cyrus’ book help situate the novel in the now and help give a historical stage for his family martyrdom such as his uncle dressed as the Angel of Death in battle as a martyr for a national cause.Though some of the more surreal, imagined moments in history felt a bit awkward, I was charmed by the ambitiousness of them.

‘Grace, that dictionary. A place where everything was attached to a meaning.’

Through Cyrus we also get an interesting exploration into identity, not being between both Persian and American identities but both at once. This sort of duality is thematic to the novel with Cyrus feeling both grace and rage at once.

‘But that's a misunderstanding of grace, which doesn't ask to be paid back. Even when you ve been given the gift twice, emerged from your own death to run away from your husband. Leaving him to grieve you, to raise your child by himself.’

Grace and forgiveness are key to the novel, grace that Cyrus was able to live, ‘grace that the man—the boy, reall—at the border accepted my bribe,’ or even grace in language, the medium through which Cyrus works now that his job as a hospital actor is over.

‘When I learned how to say "cigarette," I walked around saying it to myself like a prayer, like an incantation. see-GARR-ett. It was my favorite word. If I walked up to someone and said it, one time in every five they'd hand me one. Language could make a meal like that.’

The novel moves to New York City when Cyrus discovers Iranian-American artist Orkideh who also plans to use death as an artistic medium. Martyr!, at its heart, is an exploration of ‘the big pathological sad,’ or the ways that we all are ‘just a long emptiness, waiting to be filled,’ as Cyrus recounts from an old Muslim tale. This book is less about the emptiness, however, than it is about how we fill it. Cyrus had filled it with alcohol and found himself still empty. Now his life has shaped into a quest to understand that which, as Orkideh quips, has led him to grapple with all the Persian checkboxes of death, of poetry and an awe of mysticism. Like the form of the novel Martyr! itself, this is a journey with no defined shape and this often makes the soul-searching feel directionless, subjective, and highly existential.

‘This idea for the book, for his own dying going into the museum he'd had a grasp of its shape, why it mattered. It was a tidy, gallant idea about leaving life for something larger than mere living. Becoming an earth martyr. It made sense, and then suddenly it didn't. It held a shape and then suddenly it didn't.’

I suspect the term navel-gazing will appear in the criticisms of this book, but I happen to like that sort of thing in a novel. I also enjoy the way this felt like an expression of poetry but as a novel. Akbar plays with familiar territory for those who have read his poetry but takes it in bold and exciting directions and Martyr! makes for a darkly humorous read that asks a lot of big questions that, though they may not always arrive at conclusive answers, reminds us that the quest for knowledge is fulfilling in its own right. May we all find something to fill that emptiness.

4/5

'A photograph can say 'this is what it was.' Language can only say 'this is what it was like.''

[luce (cry bebè's back from hiatus) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!, one of my most anticipated 2024 releases, fell short of its premise. Despite its potential, Martyr! struck me as a novel that was taken out of the publishing oven far too early. The result is a rather half-baked novel that failed to truly elicit any strong emotion on my part. Despite the novel’s polyphonic structure, the various perspectives in Martyr! sounded less like a choir and more like a monotonous voice, one that inadvertently pulled me out of the reading experience. I found myself acutely aware of its constructed nature, and I felt frustrated by the book’s singular tone. To be sure, there were a couple of reflections here and there that felt perceptive, nuanced, and certainly relatable (especially when it comes to expressing the experiences/mind-set of someone who is depressed, suicidal, and/or addicted). But that was sort of it. We have this main character who despite being in possession of various ‘quirks’ (from his childhood habits to his rather ‘unique’ job at the hospital that sadly made me think of Todo sobre mi madre, a film i fucking hated), is ultimately a springboard for various discourses. The novel is most effective in the “sessions” between Cyrus, our protagonist, a newly sober Iranian-American queer man approaching 30, and Orkideh, a terminally ill performance artist who in a very Marina Abramović move is living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. These sections made me think back to María Gainza’s Optic Nerve, and so during these interactions, I found the artspeak and academic references to be apt, whereas, in the remainder of the novel, these felt either didactic or out-of-place.

Cyrus’ chapters are intercut by chapters from his family members: his father, who died while Cyrus was in college, his mother, whose death is in many ways the catalyst for Cyrus’ fixation on martyrdom, and his uncle, traumatized by his experiences in the Iranian battlefields where dressed as the Angel of death, he comforted his dying countrymen. I almost immediately questioned the author’s choice to adopt a 1st pov in their chapters, whereas Cyrus’ are told through a 3rd pov. Their voices, sounded like what Cyrus would think they would sound like.
I wished that the author could have been a bit more unconventional when it came to the structure of his novel. The storytelling could have been more experimental, for instance, something along the lines of Mary-Alice Daniel's A Coastline Is an Immeasurable Thing (a memoir that manages to balance an intimate coming-of-age with various historical accounts), Namwali Serpelll’s labyrinthine (which presents readers with different versions of the same events/episodes), or Kim Thúy’s fragmented forays into the past. A more atypical structure would have complemented Cyrus’ troubled nature to his childhood and family history, as well as his sense of dislocation. For example, we could have had Cyrus either imagining and writing about the experiences of his parents and uncle or providing secondhand accounts of their lives. After all, he is a writer, a poet, who is writing a work on martyrs that is heavily influenced by his own experiences of death and grief.
Or it could have gone for a story-within-story type of framework, a la Elizabeth Kostova, or committed more fully to being a family saga, after all, that type of narrative doesn't prevent one from exploring more ‘literary’ topics or providing thought-provoking reading material (eg. Elif Shafak, Louise Erdrich, Hala Alyan, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton). But Martyr! never quite finds its footing. The use of multiple perspectives is done by rote. And I wouldn’t have minded as much if these various voices had depth, but they struck me as self-referential, mere exercises in style. The author tries to jazz things up by including sections where Cyrus imagines conversations between real-life people, like his mother, and fictional characters, like Lisa Simpson. Not only is this idea not particularly original (exploring a character’s psyche by having them engage in imaginary dialogues with famous figures). Maybe if the author had captured the essence of these fictional figures, I would have been more willing to overlook the contrived nature of these sections, but as it was Lisa Simpson is recognizable as such only because of her pearls and a possible reference to music. These chapters were distractingly gimmicky and further solidified my disinterest in the overall story. As I said early on, the novel did have potential, especially when it came to its topics & themes: martyrdom, death, grief, contemporary American politics, Western military interference in the Middle East, Iranian history, misperceptions of Islam, generational trauma and silence, the relationship between one’s identity and one’s art as well as the difficulty in challenging dualistic either/or way perspectives of one’s identity (when it comes to race, nationality, faith, and sexuality). In many instances dialogues or segments surrounding humanities subject areas rang hollow, at times even performative, as these added little to important issues, or advanced no new perspectives or argument, for instance when it came to using a postcolonial lens to reevaluate the Western canon. Like, we have this bit where two characters, who almost always sound like the same guy, talk about how racist The Bell Jar is, mentioning this one episode from that novel (the novel has several overt instances of racism). They then mention other controversial figures, like Susan Sontag, but the discussion there.. felt truncated, mere name-dropping. One character concludes childishly that everyone should do as he does. I wanted more from a scene like this, and certainly, I wanted this scene to feel like a realistic back-and-forward between two people.
If you follow my reviews here on GR, you know by now that most of my favorite novels are centered around alienated, self-sabotaging, navel-gazing characters (eg. Are You Happy Now by Hanna Jameson, Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi, You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat and The Arena of the Unwell by Liam Konemann). And I also have a high tolerance when it comes to rambling internal monologues, or very academic novels (for instance Elif Batuman’s duology). But with Martyr! I did not feel that I was reading a compelling or in-depth character study. Cyrus was a means through which the author could initiate and discuss various topics. Cyrus’ internal monologue struck me as slightly formulaic, affected even. The ideas and images we found there were often overly wordy, in a way that took me out of the reading experience. It made me think of a certain type of very self-conscious academic writing, the kind of writing where something ‘simple’ is worded in such an unnecessarily convoluted way as to lose sight of its original meaning/purpose and can come across as just plain pretentious. While the novel does touch upon interesting issues, certain dialogues, especially the ones between Cyrus and his best friend, or Cyrus and his sponsor, seemed, schematic, and slightly dry. There is this plot reveal that struck me as sentimental and out-of-place, the type of plot point that would have been more suited to a more book-clubby book, or something from Hollywood.
The author's depiction of his female characters left me with the impression that he was playing it 'safe'. Their personalities seemed to blend together, and while they were allowed some flaws, the author held back from making them as chaotic or lively as their male counterparts.

As I said above, the novel would have benefited from having a more ambiguous type of storytelling, as it would have suited the novel’s themes: Cyrus' tendency to mythologize his past and family history, the uncertain nature of the act of retrospection, and so on. I have just read several books exploring these themes and, compared to those, Martyr! comes across as rather derivative and generic. Which is a pity, especially for a novel that includes a quote by Clarice Lispector...

There were instances, often on a sentence level ("hairless in a way that makes my skull louder, the angles of my jaw"...i understand wanting to emphasize the uncle's, shall we say, fragmented psyche but his chapters were, predictably, full of these clunky stylized sentences), that needed more thorough editing (did we really need Cyrus to tell us how a wikipedia page is usually subdivided? And, at the risk of being pedantic: it's Venice Biennale, not Venice Biennal). A lot of descriptions were just...trying too hard (exhibit a: "his face all chin and jaw, cavernous dark eyes like weeping poppies"; exhibit b: "the narrowing angles of her jaw and neck like a diving crystal dangling from an invisible string").

It was by no means a bad read but it was a forgettable one. I was too aware of the author’s presence to feel invested in the story or its characters. The snippets of poetry that we get (written by Cyrus for his book) didn’t feel as striking as they were meant to be. All in all, Martyr was a bit of a misfire. Cyrus is the type of alienated and obsessive young(ish) man going through what could be broadly described as an existential crisis that I have come across before in literature (Hari Kunzru's Red Pill, David Santos Donaldson's Greenlanad, David Hoon Kim's Paris Is a Party, Paris Is a Ghost) and despite his experiences throughout the novel he ultimately ends up adhering to a predictable story arc (featuring convenient coincidences, moments of truth, and so on) that struck me as disappointingly vanilla.

I don’t think that I’d read more by Akbar, but you never know. If this book is on your radar I recommend you give it a try despite my negative review or at least check out more positive reviews if you are making your mind up about it.

[Candi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was completely ignorant of the poetry of Kaveh Akbar, until I read Martyr!, his first novel. Now that I’ve read his beautiful, lyrical prose, I’ll be sure to seek one of his poetry collections. At first, I thought this book was going to take me to some very dark places. Well, the subject matter is often quite dark, but Akbar manages this with a lighter touch by the addition of humor and the care which he has for his characters. There’s a warmth to the writing that keeps the reader from wallowing in the depths of despair. When we first meet twenty-seven-year-old Cyrus, he’s a recovering alcoholic and drug addict.

“It felt like the only time Cyrus ever really felt now-ness was when he was using. When now was physiologically, chemically discernible from before. Otherwise he felt completely awash in time: stuck between birth and death, an interval where he’d never quite gotten his footing. But he was also awash in the world and its checkboxes – neither Iranian nor American, neither Muslim nor not-Muslim, neither drunk nor in meaningful recovery, neither gay nor straight. Each camp thought he was too much the other thing. That there were camps at all made his head swim.”

Now that he’s sober, he’s completely obsessed with the idea of death. His mother died a senseless death when her airplane was shot down in the Persian Gulf when he was just a baby. His father, an employee at a chicken factory farm in the Midwest, died shortly after raising Cyrus to adulthood and seeing him off to university. There’s a lot of struggling with the meaning of life which further leads to Cyrus’s decision to delve into the lives of the martyrs. He wants to write a book about martyrdom and the idea that a death means something. That one doesn’t live and die for nothing.

“… my whole life I’ve thought about my mom on that flight, how meaningless her death was. Truly literally like, meaningless. Without meaning. The difference between 290 dead and 289. It’s actuarial. Not even tragic, you know? So was she a martyr? There has to be a definition of the word that can accommodate her. That’s what I’m after.”

When he learns of a visual artist living out her last days in a Brooklyn museum, Cyrus buys a ticket east. This might be his chance to find that meaning for which he’s been searching. Orkideh has been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and has installed herself in an exhibit called Death-Speak. Visitors are invited to sit with Orkideh to talk openly about death. The first thing I thought of was Marina Abramović and her 2010 MoMA performance titled The Artist is Present. As it turns out, Kaveh Akbar was thinking of this as well. Abramović’s performance was referred to briefly in this book. This is the part of the book that truly engaged me the most. That philosophical dialogue between Cyrus and Orkideh really made me think about a lot of things. Life and death, of course. But more than that. The two discuss the role of art and language in our lives. Identity, faith, grace and love are examined. I wanted to sit with the two of them for many more days and glean what I could – particularly from Orkideh. After all, it’s through her that Cyrus learns a bit more about living a life rather than getting hung up on death itself. Oh, and the act of writing and what language holds and fails to hold! I’m sure many of us could relate to these discussions, as lovers of words ourselves.

“I guess, I write these sentences where I try to lineate grief or doubt or joy or sex or whatever till it sounds as urgent as it feels. But I know the words will never feel like the thing. The language will never be the thing.” - Cyrus

“There’s nothing in my life that isn’t bound to my language, or my DNA. What comes the closest, I think, is sex. Not entirely without language of course, and certainly not without the body. But in terms of earnest, mellifluous human communication involving the least junk, sex reigns. It’s where the comprehension density is the greatest. A discerning lover can read an Odyssey in a gasp, a Shahnameh in a sigh.” - Orkideh

I’m giddy thinking about this book! I kept going back and forth between four or five stars. It’s not a perfect book, but when it comes down to it, the question I ask myself is how much enjoyment did I have while reading this? The answer is a whole lot! I loved Cyrus and his questions, his doubts, and his imperfections. I won’t ever forget Orkideh. Akbar adored his characters and made me do the same, even at their most selfish and self-destructive moments. A writer who can do that and manages to offer such thought-provoking topics is going to get five stars from me. I’m going to read your poetry next, dear man.

Note: I just watched a bit of Kaveh Akbar reading one of his poems on YouTube as well as a piece where he reads a portion of this novel. Yep. He’s just as endearing as I imagined him to be.

“I’ve had a rich life. I’ve eaten oysters fresh out of the Caspian! I’ve been to the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City! I’ve made love and been in love and fallen out of love. I’ve made art. I’ve been so lucky.”

“Love was a room that appeared when you stepped into it.”

[hadyeh | هَدیه · Rating 1 out of 5]

ok i wanted to love this book very much, since i am a fan of akbar’s poetry. also bc on paper, in many ways, it felt like it was written exactly for me, or for people like me. and yet—i felt like this book was just incredibly...palatable, like it was bending over backwards to be legible and mushy enough to be digested by libs and natalie portmans who can read this book and feel good about continuing to posture as they do about iran and iranians. and definitely it was not for me, akbar’s fellow iranian-born angsty immigrant. sadly i found it to be Very Unspicy and Extremely Self Absorbed despite being about martyrdom and empire, topics which are fundamentally Spicy and Vast—or at least have the potential to be. there were a few instances of rich texture: the opening, the giraffe scene, ferdowsi’s story, etc, but unfortunately i feel like these vivid threads were started and then deposited (abandoned?) into the self absorbed soliloquizing goopy rest of the book, which had a lot of poetic connective tissue and not too much.. tooth? anyway. wish i could have loved it—should’ve known that a book called martyr full page featured in the nyt couldn’t exactly be uh.. well named. and come on. you’re really gonna do rumi like that? also arian moayed pronounce one (1) farsi word right challenge. literally one brother. begging

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This might sound strange, but this novel started to really remind me a lot of The Goldfinch, the further I got into it. Both are stories of young, self destructive, motherless men (motherless as a result of what you could call terrorist acts) hot-messing it through the world, trying to make sense of how to live, hurting dear and selfless people in their lives. Both are incredibly ambitious books, both are compelling yet imperfect and possibly a bit melodramatic.

It's so easy to finish someone's life work and declare it "good" or "bad", isn't it? Believe me, in my comparison to Tartt's Pulitzer winning novel, I am not attempting to be reductive or, really, all that critical. I'll come out and say I LOVED The Goldfinch when I read it, about a decade ago. It pulled me out of a young-mother-sleep-deprived-art-starved stupor. So I will always love that book, even if I sometimes wonder if I'd feel the same way if I read it again, now.

And I loved the experience of reading Kaveh Akbar's book for the same reasons. For the beautiful writing, and for the characters, and particularly the investment in the main character's fate. Plus, this has a strong reference to performance artist Marina Abramovic (who I love), and a dream sequence featuring Sufi mystic Rumi (who I adore) smoking some reefer, so there's that. There's also a truly illuminating and fascinating Iranian perspective here, one that I was grateful to experience.

There's something messy about this novel, something that occasionally feels a bit too much, and relies on a grand coincidence of plot, and it feels like the author threw everything including the kitchen sink at it.

But, I have to admire the thoughtfulness and the spirit in which this book was written. I mean, I come out of this novel, which hinges on the question of how to make one's death mean something, with a secret burst in my heart, simple but revelatory at the same time, and which smells like lavender and sunshine: it's the meaningfulness of one's LIFE that is the important thing.

[Grace Escapes · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can tell this book was written by a poet — and I mean that in both a good and a bad way. There are plenty of beautiful passages, but the plot basically slows to a crawl when Cyrus reaches New York City and that is when we are treated to an enormous plot contrivance that felt unsupported by the rest of the text. There are multiple POVs (Cyrus’s dad, his mom, his uncle??) that, if they even have a clear purpose, are far too underdeveloped to meaningfully contribute to the story. The underdevelopment of Roya in particular was a fatal flaw given how critically important she becomes to the story. On top of that, the incessant dream sequences distracted from the main plot (and the side POVs) and added nothing—there were no new voices or conversations. I did like the addition of Cyrus’s poetry, however.

I also had an issue with the central theme. Having such a close up concern on martyrdom *specifically* (not just death generally) confused me as a theme given what we came to understand about Cyrus’s past and family. But okay, even if I accept that as a central theme, the treatment of the theme became repetitive and pretty quickly dull. In many conversations with his sponsor, Orkideh, and Zee, we never really understand how Cyrus makes the connection from being depressed/suicidal to wanting to be a martyr. His own words are confusing on that front. He wants to die, badly, but not until he can figure out a way to make his death matter. It felt like a dishonest representation of how a depressed person might actually think about death, it was so clinical and academic. And ultimately, Cyrus sort of abandons the idea anyway.

Which brings me to the ending. I was unfortunately unmoved by the last few chapters (which I could tell were supposed to move me). The climax of Cyrus’s relationships with Orkideh and Zee were unconvincing, because those relationships in and of themselves were unconvincing. The relationships were predicated on both characters *giving* and giving and giving to Cyrus, being these guides almost for the sake of his healing and development. They were used for the sake of the plot, and nothing more.

It was a fine book, but not what I expected given rave reviews.

[Meike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now a Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction 2024
Booker bait extraordinaire, and I'm here for it! This is an over-ambitious, messy romp, and I love it for being daring, out there, and eccentric. Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian-American poet, and his fiction debut tells the story of Iranian-American wannabe-poet Cyrus Shams who figures that to make his life count, he should ponder what a meaningful death constitutes. An orphan who is recovering from what you would have to call multitox addictions, he sets out to craft a book on martyrdom, and Akbar does not only give us snippets from this ouevre, no: In a mosaic of timelines and perspectives, he tells us the story of Cyrus' family members and their deaths.

Cyrus' mother Roya was on her way from Teheran to a PTSD ward in Dubai to visit her brother who had been tasked to patrol the killing fields in the Iran-Iraq war when her plane suddenly crashed: She was one of the passengers of Iran Air Flight 655 that was shot down by the US, which led to huge international criticism until the case was finally settled before International Court of Justice. What drives Cyrus insane is that his mother's death was, in the grand scheme of things, meaningless to the world. After the tragedy, his father Ali took him to Indiana and worked on a poultry farm while simultaneously self-destructing.

Grown-up Cyrus, looking for direction and inspiration, befriends Orkideh, a female Iranian-American artist who suffers from terminal cancer and stages a performance similar to Marina Abramović's "The Artist Is Present": She sits in gallery and talks to anyone who joins the line. We also get insomnia-induced hallucinations feat. Trump, Lisa Simpson, etc. We get bisexual love. Iranian poets. Impressionistic scenes. Witty conversations. Beautiful, surprising metaphors. Akbar goes all in.

And sure: You could also see this as a weakness, that it's over-the-top, too much. But I love the playfulness with which this author addresses one of the oldest themes in literature and philosophy: The search for meaning. How can an Iranian-American ex-addict and aspiring poet with nothing to show for himself but a profound knowledge of grief and anger turn into one of his ideols, Joan of Arc or early Muslim leader Hussain? How to ascribe meaning to the apparently meaningless, how to endure it? The deep humaneness of Cyrus also lies in the silliness of trying to frame tragic life events as martyrdom: This is literature that laughs about literature, about the stories we tell to generate meaning, but not in a condescending, but in an empathic way.

Flawed? Yes. But interestingly so, and also brave and imaginative.

You can check out the podcast gang discussing the German translation Märtyrer! here: https://papierstaupodcast.de/podcast/...

[Léa · Rating 5 out of 5]

the writing! the conversation on mortality and the innate desire to be remembered / become a martyr! the characters! I feel like I've just been punched in the stomach this was beautiful

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great musings and ideas about intergenerational trauma and loss, addiction, and art throughout this book. I enjoyed reading the perspective of Cyrus, our queer Iranian American protagonist. The first 50 to 100 pages of the book hooked me. However, by the middle of the book I was less enthused because the prose seemed unfocused and meandering to me. I didn’t mind all the different points of view as much as how they started to drag for me due to the floridness of the writing. Perhaps people who enjoy poetry more than I do will like the way this book is written more than I did.

[Bob Rudge · Rating 2 out of 5]

The kind of book that reviewers love and normal people find boring and inscrutable.

[Quirine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m trying to find words to explain what this book meant to me. I can’t. The only sentence that keeps repeating in my mind is ‘There’s so much human suffering. And yet we still manage to make it beautiful.’

[Darryl Suite · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literally just finished. So I’m going to need more time to compile my thoughts.

I get why some readers say this book is all over the place. I agree, but that overzealousness worked for me. It was just so compelling the entire time. Very creative, unique, and the prose was ridiculously good.

I’m not usually an envious person, but lawd, I am insanely jealous of this man’s talent lolz. I could pretty much underline the entire book. Like how???

Really enjoyed all the tangents, anecdotes, dream sequences, philosophical ponderings, pretty much everything that this novel had to offer. The ending is bonkers, yes, but I thought it was fitting + gorgeous.

Overall, what a wild one. A new fave.

~Full review coming soon.

[Summer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Martyr was one of my most anticipated reads of 2024 and I'm happy to say that it exceeded all of my expectations!

Martyr is centered around Cyrus Shams. Cyrus is a 20-something poet who is recently sober, the son of Iranian immigrants, and is living in Indiana. As a young child, Cyrus lost his mother when her plane was accidentally shot down and his father recently passed away from a stroke leaving him orphaned.

Cyrus is grappling with an existential crisis and has recently become obsessed with martyrs when he learns about a terminally ill artist who is living out her final days in public at a modern art museum in NYC. Cyrus heads to NYC and embarks on a journey that leads him to uncover some mysteries of his family's past as well as some self-discovery.

This beautiful story just blew me away! It's a story about art, theology, mythology, language, culture, identity, and recovery. Filled with philosophical tidbits, I found this book to be incredibly profound and inspiring. But not only that, it's also very humorous at times. I could seriously rave all day about this book! This is Kaveh Akbar‘s debut fiction novel and I see a remarkable future for him in the literary world!

I listened to the audiobook version of Martyr which was narrated by Arian Moayed who did an amazing job.

Martyr by Kaveh Akbar will be available on January 23 from AA Knopf. Many thanks to Penguin Random House Audio for the gifted copy!!

[elle · Rating 2 out of 5]

bruh.

this book took me 20 days to read, and to be honest it felt like a whole lot longer.

this book - in my opinion - is very obviously a debut novel. it reads like the author has A LOT to say and wanted to put it all in a single book without killing any of his darlings or including any of the (potentially boring) stuff you need to have character development or a compelling plot. the characters went on constant tangents chock-full of pretentious language that people - even very smart people - do not use in (enjoyable) conversation with each other. the irrelevancy of said tangents to the characters’ conversations made me think that the author wanted to pepper the book with his thoughts without integrating them organically or saving some for a follow-up novel (or twitter).

also - and this is just my personal preference - i don’t care for purple prose. for some reason i keep reading books written by poets and getting annoyed by constant similes that make no sense. kind of like how i read tons of short story collections then complain about how i hate short stories. i am the problem. but also similes are.

but also the cover? gorgeous. and don’t even get me STARTED on the spine. and also titles that end in exclamation points.

[Bookishrealm · Rating 5 out of 5]

How does one describe the beauty that is Kaveh Akbar's writing in Martyr!?

I never understood the social media trend of "books I wish I could read again for the first time" until I picked this up. Though this is my first encounter with Akbar, it definitely won't be my last. Could I begin to describe or explain this book? Absolutely not. However, it's a beautiful lesson in faith, fear, death, martyrdom, life, purpose, and identity. Akbar crafts Cyrus in way that is so in-depth and three dimensional. I've never felt so invested in a characters self-discovery and the history of their family. Akbar builds the narrative in a way that plays with time, place, the very core of reality. Parts felt like a fever dream while others made me check my own sense of self and purpose. The twists and turns were so unexpected. And that ending....what becomes of my dear my friend? I'm not sure, but I know that each sentence was beautifully crafted and written with so much purpose/intention. If you haven't had the chance to read this book, I implore you to give it a try. I know that I'll be re-reading it soon.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The trouble with Kaveh Akbar is that I heard his voice first.

I heard him speak. At crowded bookstores, on podcasts, staring into the eyes of smitten interlocutors with the kind of attentiveness one would pay for, his heartbreaking smile swallowing his entire face.

Kaveh Akbar really pays attention. Like all great poets do.

I watched him talk with his hands, his knees bobbing up and down with nervousness and excitement, trying to stay in his seat, the brilliance of his brain on full display, zigzagging wildly inside his organs before making it to his lips.

An artist, a man-child consumed with a hunger that is hard to miss, a heart so big it could not live anywhere else but on his sleeve. Language just needed to catch up.

And oh, does it try here. Addiction, identity, martyrdom, art, grief, friendship, alienation, recovery, creativity, American-ness, Iranian-ness, growing up, love, purpose. Longing, longing, longing. This beautiful oddity of a book pulses with Akbar’s high-octane brain and sensitivity, feeling its way around like tentacles. Waiting for language to catch up.

And somehow, language fails. But not because it isn’t wonderful and inventive and razor-sharp wicked smart. Language fails because the beauty of THAT life, of what is, of what Akbar knows is there, that which can sometimes be caught on film or photography, will always stay out of reach of… words.

Dreams are one of the most mysterious and bewitching things that we experience and yet they fall flat as soon as we speak them. So does our sense of identity. So does the fragile hollow that we’re all trying to fill.

The trouble with Kaveh Akbar is that I heard his voice first.

And how can you not love him.

[Meliksah Altuntas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow!

Bu neydi böyle…

İlk kez buraya bir kitapla ilgili birkaç cümle bırakma isteği doğdu içimde. Sadece burada dursun istiyorum bu his. Oturup uzun uzadıya bir eleştiri yazısına girişmeyeceğim.

Şunu düşündürdü bana bu kitap, roman formu tam da böyle şeyler yazmak için var işte. Hayat seni dört bir koldan sıkıştırdığında her bir kolu ayrı bir yerinden tutup çekiştire çekiştire böylesine zengin ve ölçülü bir kurgusal dünyaya hapsedip ondan sonsuza kadar kurtulabilmen için var roman. Teori için, gösteriş için, para için, hatta okurlar için bile değil, yalnızca kendinden kurtulabilmenin ahenkli bir yolu olduğu için var.

Başka şeyler için de var tabii. Onu muhafazakar tanım sevdalılarına bırakıyorum.

Bu romanı, tam da böyle zamanlarda okumuş olmayı da not düşmek isterim kendime. Adaletin beklediğin değil, gidip aldığın bir şey olduğunu, yılların unutturduğu her şeyi en gencimizin bulup geri verdiği, elini en az senin kadar haklı başka bir ele kavuşturunca nasıl bir güçle donandığını, mağduriyet zırhını çıkarabilme cesareti gösterdiğinde seni neyin karşıladığını hatırladığım böyle bir zamanda okudum bu kitabı. Bitmesin diye de gözünün içine baktım ama yine de bitti.

Şimdi mecbur yıllarca tekrar tekrar okunacak. Unutup bunu da en genç olanımızdan dinlemeyelim, yaşadıklarımız da bize bir şey öğretebilsin diye.

[Pow Wow · Rating 1 out of 5]

A story of intergenerational trauma (surprise!) mixed with migrant themes and magical realism and all of it is awful. It starts out promising and there’s a couple of minor highlights: the relationship between the narrator and his father is sensitively handled, as is that with his AA sponsor. But the longer the book goes on, the more overwrought writing, labored poetry album ejaculations, nonsensical plot twists and wholly unearned attempts at topical relevance take over. Some of it is shockingly bad and I’m not sure what kind of kool aid critics have been drinking to sing its praises. Performative, contrived nonsense - avoid or proceed at your own risk.

[leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a stunning, philosophical book about one of the most human endeavours: to live a life worth being remembered. We follow a character who spends the novel battling with a want to be martyred, to have his life written down in ink, to be given space in the history books. It’s a very human impulse, the actions of many figures throughout history could be boiled down to this one desire, and it’s something that Akbar explores with such deftness and beauty here.
Strangely, the most comforting part about this book is accepting uncertainty. We have so many questions and not many of the answers, but sometimes you have to accept that in order to live your life, and maybe that’s ok.

4.5 (because i am still unsure how i feel about the ending…)

[Nooshin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book had a good heart, but that’s about all the good things I can say about it as an Iranian person who actually grew up in Iran.
Look, I’m not against writing about things you did not strictly experience (what world of fiction would that promise?), but I do believe that if you plan to write about Iran in the 1970s and ‘80s, you need more than a whiff of your Irani identity and an ironclad will. You need to either do your research (or, hell, have a person who has ever been to Iran once proofread your book and go over your audio recordings) or stick to the Iranian-American experience.
This book had anachronisms, inaccuracies, and impossibilities in it about life in Iran that would make any run-of-the-mill Iranian scoff. There were no laundromats in Iran in the ‘70s. People in Iran did not show each other the thumbs-up gesture in the ‘80s (if they did, it was an insult with sexual connotations) or randomly buy tickets to the US. ‘Baba’ is not used like that. Pretty much none of the Persian words are pronounced like they were in the audiobook read by Arian Moayed.
The sum of all of this and more made this book fail at provoking any sympathy in me. To me, this read like a fantasy-adjacent fanfic of Iranian life by a boy in search of his uprooted origins. It read like a weak parody of real life.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book made me so angry. The protagonist embodies patheticism, and his whole life can only be described as futile.