NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR FOR 2024 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • 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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Martyr!
By Kaveh Akbar
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR FOR 2024 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • 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.
Popular Reviews(8)
Reviewed by MichelleUnfassbar schön geschrieben. Nur bin ich leider bis zum Ende nicht wirklich mit der Hauptfigur warm geworden, daher die 1,5 Sterne Abzug.
Reviewed by tobygWhat was that 🥹😭 hab’s geliebt. Eine Geschichte von Leben, Tod, dem Sinn von Leben und Tod, Substanzmissbrauch, ein Leben mit der Sucht und dem Sinn von einem nüchternen Leben. Man begleitet den Protagonisten auf der Suche nach Antworten und deckt dabei Geheimnisse aus seiner Familie auf, mit einem unerwarteten twist!
Reviewed by Melisunfassbar gut geschrieben. als kind von eltern in der diaspora habe ich sehr mitgefühlt. kaveh akbar‘s debüt ist aussagekräftiger als ich gedacht hätte!!
Reviewed by NikeThis was so precise!
Reviewed by VerenaWhat a book. I loved it. The writing is so beautiful. I finished the book hours ago but I’m still thinking about the end and I still don’t know what to think about the last few pages “WHAT DISTINGUISHES GRACE FROM EVERYTHING ELSE? GRACE IS unearned. If you've moved through the world in such a way as to feel you've earned cosmic compensation, then what you've earned is something more like justice, like propriety. Not grace. Propriety is correct. Justice is just. There's an inescapable transactional quality: perform x good, receive y reward. Grace doesn't work that way. It begins with the reward. Goodness never enters the equation.”