An excellent book! The voice was so clever and exciting, but the plot fell a bit flat of the voice for me at times.

The writing in this book is amazing and I will look for future books by this author. This felt really authentic until the major plot twist and it kind of fell apart for me then, I also did not appreciate the ambiguous ending- it seemed like the author didn't really know how to end it and a little MFA workshoppy.

Need a reread; this went completely over my head.

Review to come.

*edit June 2025 Okay I've tried this book twice and I'm not getting along with the style, sadly. So this really *is* an arc that got away.

I recommend this to fans of highly stylized writing, hectic pace for hectic's sake, and unlikeable characters (which I found rather stigmatizing since the main character is an alcoholic and mentally ill besides, but he acts bitter toward everyone he meets and like he blames everyone outside of himself for his circumstances not improving.)

DNF @ 11% (second read)

Thank you to the author Kevah Akbar, publishers Knopf, and NetGalley for an accessible digital arc of MARTYR! All views are mine.

Ok I was soooo late with reading this book but OH MY GOD it’s a game changer. It made me reflect on myself and triggered a beautiful existential questioning that left me filled with hope. I love this book, bury me with it.

I fell irrevocably in love with Cyrus. The pacing and the prose were mesmerizing and beautiful. I was swept away by this book.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a novel that lingers—it doesn’t demand answers, but it asks the kinds of questions that stay with you. It follows Cyrus Shams, an Iranian man living in the U.S., who is lost in grief, addiction, and the search for meaning. His mother’s death weighs on him, as does the disconnection he feels from both his birthplace and the country he now calls home.

What struck me most was the way the book moves between humor and sorrow. Cyrus is often self-destructive, but he’s also sharp and funny, and his observations make the story feel surprisingly alive. There were moments that made me laugh and others that quietly pulled me into his sadness. The novel doesn’t shy away from addiction or loneliness, but it also doesn’t dwell in hopelessness.

My apologies to Netgalley, who gifted me with an early opportunity to read this book, and then I sat on that opportunity for over a year. This book was an incredible book for me, and it was my loss for being lazy!

The guilt and disappointment of a man and his son over outliving their wife/mother turns their existence into one of toleration of one another. As Cyrus tries to make sense of his past after his father's death and the ensuing years that lack direction, he starts to examine the family history in an attempt to create meaning and an anchor in his life. This is a beautiful book!

Wow. This book is an absolute stunner. We read this for book club and had no shortage of topics to discuss, including the ending which left us with many different impressions. I want to keep this spoiler free so I will just say, the meditations on life, death, purpose, sacrifice and generational trauma were so deeply and humanely explored. One of my favorite reads this year. Five stars. The audiobook production is exceptionally narrated by Arian Moayed who captures a wide range of characters, voices, and accents in a way few narrators do.

I was really drawn in for the first half of the book or so, but then my interest waned. It took me a long time to pick it back up and finally finish it.

I wasn’t as blown away by this book as I expected to be, based on its hype. First, I found it difficult to get into the story, finding the beginning to be disjointed and less than compelling. I actually didn’t start to like it until the main character, Cyrus, goes to New York to meet with a dying woman who’s dying is a form of performance art at a Brooklyn museum. The conversations Cyrus has with the woman and ultimate revelations are the most interesting parts of the book. For the most part, the rest is superfluous.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me an advanced copy of the book to read for free. My opinion is voluntary.

This book will sit with me for a long while. It won't work for everyone but if you are looking for a different story where a young person (20 something) of the last decades is searching to understand themselves, this is the book. It focuses on the Iranian culture and provides a wonderfully detailed insight to a first-generation person's views in our current world with a contemporary sense of humor. The reader follows Cyrus in his 20-30s as he looks back on his childhood, his current friends and his parents. His mother is a victim in plane being shot out of the sky mistakenly by the US. This happens as an infant and his father leaves Iran and moves him and Cyrus to Indiana. His father seeks hard laborious work to make the best life for his son and educates him. Cyrus grows up in America but always feels the outsider. He grieves for the mother he never knew. This pushes him into a depressive state after finishing his education and losing his father. He turns to alcohol and drugs and tries to find a meaning in his life. He then decided his life means nothing so his death should mean something. This is where our title comes into play. This martyrdom idea takes him on a unique journey that makes this story rememberable. Please do yourself the pleasure of reading this book.

Rather brilliant. Quite fractured, however a pleasure to read for its freshness and insights. Looking forward to what he does next.

I received an e-arc from NetGalley but sort of forgot. I ended up listening to most of this on audiobook and that was an incredible way to experience the book. The reader brought humor to some of the lines that I was missing by just reading the galley.

This is the story of Cyrus Shams, a recovering addict, who wants to make his life and/or death mean something.

You learn about his family from their perspectives, you get to read some of his writing about martyrs and martyrdom, which while very poetic, weren't my favorite parts.

The end went in a place that I was not expecting and I honestly have been thinking about it since I read it. This was a good book and I'm glad to have read it. Also, the cover is very striking, in my opinion. Simple but eyecatching.

I had a really hard time getting into this book. It was a little to train-of-thought for me. I can appreciate that the commentary and overall message of the story is very beautiful and meaningful. I appreciate the LGBTQIA+ themes, and I really liked the characters and how they were portrayed. I will probably try to revisit this novel in the future for a reread, it was just a challenge for me at this time.

This was a very funny, enjoyable book with deeper, more important subtextual aspects. Incredible writing that touches on sexuality, addiction, family trauma and so much more, it surprised me and gave me all the feels!

A novel that explores so much of what it means to live and love including all the pain and joy it can bring. Told across multiple timelines and points of view between Cyrus Sham and his mother and father, this book includes themes of sobriety/addiction, grief, death/dying, and martyrdom. You can tell this is written by a poet, especially in the end when the scene delves into an almost dreamscape of colors. It's a truly beautiful and complex novel that I will thinking about for years to come.

What a surprise and the book of the year from so many sources! I was drawn in originally by the cover and typography choices, but was taken aback by the story and contents delivered so masterfully for a debut.

I don't think I can write any review that would express how incredible this book was. Just read it! Gorgeous writing, a moving story - it dives deep into big philosophical questions and considerations about life, death, and everything in between in a way that flows with the story and stays with you long after you read it. The book follows an Iranian man whose contemplating these issues as he starts attending an exhibit at a museum where a dying artist, diagnosed with cancer, will have conversations with visitors to the museum. The conversations and everything between them open a conversation with the reader about all these big thoughts and ideas and will open your mind to new perceptions, questions, answers, and conversations. Looooved!

This novel presents an important perspective, that of a young man recently transplanted to the US from Iran, and lacking strong family support. It's worth reading simply for this perspective. The addiction and homosexuality is not really unique anymore as there are so many novels to choose from where the single male characters struggle with addiction and gayness. There are too many dream scenes and they are always a tough sell and apart from that there are so many cultural references to people that many Americans will not understand. The writing is inspiring and enjoyable regardless of what he is writing about--the voice is just really lyrical and many sentences are so wonderful they are worth re-reading.

The rare piece of literature that feels like an honour to read. Poets make incredible novelists, and this is no exception. Beautiful, heartbreaking, astonishing in its originality.