"Webster defines a martyr as someone who sacrifices something of immense value, even their own life, for the sake of a principle.
With Cyrus Shams we are introduced to an orphaned Iranian, Cyrus, navigating a self-imposed purgatory. His journey is one of grappling with the throes of alcoholism, exploring artistic endeavors, and struggling to form and cherish meaningful friendships. He has one true friend who helps him on this journey. His fascination with mortality takes an intriguing turn when he becomes captivated by Orkideh, a renowned Iranian artist who transforms her impending demise into an art form.
This brief synopsis encapsulates what felt like an expansive journey within the book's pages. The initial segment unfolds poetically, painting vivid portraits of the quest for significance in life. However, the narrative takes a divergent path in the second part, offering disjointed tales of characters who enter and exit Cyrus's world fleetingly, some perhaps never truly existing within it. Initially challenging, this section nearly prompted me to set the book aside. Yet, just as I contemplated doing this, the narrative swiftly transitions in the third part, adopting a prose that propels the story forward with a dynamic pace.

Martyr (January 2024)
By Kaveh Akbar
Borzoi/Alfred A. Knopf, 352 pages.
★★★

Cyrus Shams doesn’t want to die; he just doesn’t wish to live. He thinks about becoming a martyr, but not for ideological reasons. Cyrus just wants his life to have meant something. Suicide is out, as he sees it as an act of greed. Instead he opts for a ascetic lifestyle.

Cyrus has a lot on his plate. He was born into a family that didn’t fancy residing under Iran’s theocratic government, which took power in 1979. Ali and his infant son relocated to the United States, with Roya set to join them later. Alas, her plane was ill-fated Flight 655, which was shot down in 1988 by a missile from the USS Vincennes killing all 290 passengers. It was a complete screwup by the U.S. but President Reagan’s “apology” was muted, given ongoing tensions between the two countries since the storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and holding American hostages for 444 days.

A mother’s senseless death could make a child grow up bitter. So too could seeing his father reduced to gumping chickens to support his shattered family. Nor was life in Indiana a comfortable place for a Muslim like Cyrus to come of age. When Ali dies, Cyrus struggles with being an orphan. He drifts through adolescence fixated on purity as a way to deal with his angst. When he enters Keady University in 2015–perhaps a stand-in for Butler, Akbar’s alma mater–Cyrus flips the other way.

Out with purity and in with debauchery! Cyrus takes drugs, distances himself from his remaining Iranian relatives, ignores his faith, and earns money role-playing a patient for medical student training, though it’s often a cruel outlet for his burgeoning cynicism. He also beds several women, including the wealthy Kathleen, who is neither culturally sensitive nor concerned about throwing money around with reckless disregard. It’s a doomed relationship, but she further underwrites drinking bouts that send Cyrus spiraling into alcoholism.

Cyrus broods and dabbles at writing a (sort of) guidebook for martyrs. His Polish-Egyptian roommate Zbigniew Ramadan Novak (“ Zee”) becomes his best friend, occasional lover, and partner in a few strange adventures. One involves performing odd jobs for an employer who watches them from a lawn chair while wearing only his white underwear. Overall, though, Cyrus is depressed, whiny, and irritable. He muses over the poetry of Rumi, has unusual dreams, and wonders how he can free himself from the “tyranny” of symbols. Once he gets sober he fixates anew on what sort of death would justify his life. What he misses is that martyrdom is a purposeful step linked to deeply held ideals, not something that happens through intellectualized passivity. That makes him unlikely to follow in the footsteps of the hunger strikers, suffragettes, and revolutionaries he admires.

When Cyrus finally rouses himself into action it is to travel to the Brooklyn Museum, where renowned visual artist Orkideh has placed herself in an exhibit titled “Death-Speak.” She is terminally ill and spends her final days holding court for museum visitors who wish to gawk at or talk with her. Cyrus is drawn to her for reasons he can’t articulate other than she too is Iranian. He repeatedly visits and leaves each day believing that Orkideh has connected with him on a deep level. Her death leaves him despondent, though discussions with Sang, her gallerist and ex-wife, are revelatory.

Sexuality is fluid in Martyr and advance copies have reviewed well in LGBTQ+ circles. Nonetheless, though Koveh Akbar is an accomplished poet, Martyr exhibits some first novel misfires. It lacks burnish and has periodic structural breakdowns. Akbar fumbles an opportunity to discuss American voyeurism and focuses overlong on Cyrus’s woe-is-me worldview. To be sure, literature is filled with depressives, but usually they navigate through crises, whereas Cyrus is mostly listless. The book’s most revelatory sections deal with being a Muslim in the Midwest, which readers will likely ponder more than Cyrus does. It’s also hard to ignore a happy ending that comes at us so fast that it feels contrived. It’s not that we wish Cyrus to remain mired in malaise, but his abrupt hopeful conversion, if you will, doesn’t ring true for a character as melancholy as he. Call Akbar’s an interesting first novel with room for growth.

Rob Weir

If I were queer and Muslim, I would be this main character. That's the universal beauty that Kaveh Akbar paints with the brush of this very particular poet/mystic/depressed artist/Enneagram 4 (if you know, you know). Cyrus Shams was born in Iran and left at an early age after his mother's passenger plane, Iranian Flight 655, was shot down by an American warship over the Persian Gulf. His father relocated to Indiana to work on a chicken farm to give his son new possibility. Cyrus dove into drugs and alcohol to escape his own sensitivity and pain. Now, newly sober, he seeks to make sense of life, love, and death by investigating why people die and for what purpose - especially the mysterious artist who is dying publicly of cancer as a performance piece at the Met.

As a poetic soul in recovery who grew up in Indiana, I was immediately drawn to Cyrus both in his beauty and in his shame. Akbar, a poet himself, intersperses concrete details of life on campus and the city with poetry and reflections on God, meaning, love and pain. He neatly contemplates this gigantic themes without being preachy or too vague, as only a poet can do. And the multifaceted and multigendered love relationships here are handled sensitively without being too preachy, relationships that anyone can relate to - even a straight white Mennonite boy.

I am not sure how to even talk about this book. It's weird, it's disjointed, it's all over the place and yet it also has so much heart. The story seems like it's going nowhere, it requires a lot of patience to stick with it and follow the writer's journey and musings about religion, addiction, belonging, grief, death, martyrdom, art and more. But then at some point it starts to come together and then it's not possible to not get swept up with the story. By the time you're done, it's one of those books where the people and the story stay with you long after you turn the last page.

with gratitude to netgalley and Knopf for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review

MARTYR-Kaveh Akbar
This is a very difficult book for me to evaluate.
The last third of the book is terrific but I had a very difficult time with the first part.The main character-Cyrus Shams-is traumatized early in life by his mother’s death in a plane accidentally shot down by an American missile.Over the course of the book he spirals through alcohol drug addiction and eventual sobriety. He struggles to give meaning to his life and that of others through martyrdom.
The problem for me was the story line of most of the book. It felt disjointed, with no coherent plot line and seemed to chaotically move from character to character without any coherence.I always finish a read( and glad I did given the ending) but almost quit several t times. The book just didn’t work for me, perhaps my fault because it got such rave reviews.

This is a thought provoking story. The first bit was hard for me, but once I got into the main character, he grew on me. So many emotions were invoked while reading. Well done.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book.

Martyr! was a bit of a wild ride. It took me a while to become invested in the main character's struggle to find meaning in life, but at the halfway point of the book, I realized I was deeply invested and raced to the end.

Martyr! is not just about death, which the title implies, but about how to live life with meaning and purpose -- and if we slowed down for a minute and set down our phones, that might well be the question haunting all of us.

Literary fiction at its best. Kaveri Akbars writing transported me right into this story transported me from my world into the lives of his characters their world.A book I will be recommending to all book lovers.#netgalley #knopf

I loved this book desperately. It does so many things and does them all so well. It takes on grief, death, family, addiction, and love and weaves them together with such depth and sensitivity, each feels thoroughly examined and uniquely represented. The characters are drawn with such detail and care, they implanted directly into my heart. The storyline itself is compelling and perfectly crafted. Sometimes I find changing perspectives and time periods jarring and that it takes me out of the story, but here it's executed with such precision and purpose I happily went for the ride, and it paid off.

I recommend this book for anyone who needs to be quickly absorbed into a compelling story where every character is worth knowing. It's perfect for folks to look at death, grief, and life's purpose with an author whose perspective on those subjects is so deeply considered. The writing is gorgeous, the story is riveting, and the characters are robust. It has it all!

I wanted to love this book, but it felt too disjointed. The experience was fragmented in a way that didn’t feel particularly rewarding or captivating, despite me really liking the themes.

Kaveh Akbar wields language like a magician. His literary and poetic abilities are brought to bear in this book with a brutal honesty as we follow the main character and his struggle to make sense of this world we live in. The novel reads smoothly, a fiction story with an eye to language and the way we can use it to move through this world. I felt empathy for the main character and was happy to read along and learn more about his journey. As an Iranian, this was particularly a pleasure to read.

The first thing I thought when I came to the end of this book was, "Well, we need more literary love stories."

This is more than a love story, but love is a theme. Purpose, friendship, the hardship of being alive and making meaning out of the strange coincidences that move us from one thing to the next. Akbar throws a lot of things together here -- a book within a book, Dickensian-level plot, fantasy sequences, poetry -- and mostly, it works. There were parts I liked better than others, sections I found myself rushing through to get back to the thread of story I cared most about, but then a sentence or a phrase would be stop me in my hurry. Akbar is a poet, and you can see that in the language and the elliptical structure.

I was always excited to pick this book up. Always interested in where it would go next.

I love love loved this book! So much! Life, grief, happiness, and the burden of living were done so well here. Truly I want everyone to read this like immediately, but I suppose I’ll just have to wait. I related to Cyrus on an almost cosmic level & I just cannot wait for others to read this as well!

Martyr! follows poet Cyrus Shams, whose obsession with martyrdom leads him to writing a book on the subject and exploring his family relationships through that lens along the way. There is a lot going on in this book, including multiple points of view (probably too much going on), but it is well-written and thought-provoking. Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for the ARC.

Such a rich and beautifully written book. This book tells the tale of Cyrus, a young man who, from a young age, faced tragedy. Born in Iran, his father moved him to the United States very early. I will not be able to do the story itself a service as it should be done, because everything I will say will not make it sound as amazing and moving as it is. The descriptions were touching, and the story itself was so all encompassing. It is a literary work of art, and I have no doubts it will touch the minds and hearts of so many because of its appeal. The story weaves in all different walks of life and such an interesting premise as well. Cyrus wants to write a book of martyrs, but in doing so, finds much out about himself and his background.
I highly recommend this book to someone wanting something different and touching, because it will do just that.

This ebook was provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Kaveh Akbar excels at language and this book is the perfect proof of it. Equally funny and poignant, the narrative of Martyr! defies everything we hear of "writing craft" and rises above so much of the same old tropey tripe that is starting to pervade even literary fiction. So glad I was able to experience this book.

Cyrus Shams is an Iranian American who lost his mom to a plane crash before he even remembers her. He's recovering from drug addiction, and living with his best friend, and sometimes lover, Zee. Because he's questioning his very life, he's considering what being a martyr would mean to his life and to others who might or might not know him. On this journey, he discovers a shocking fact, sending him into the deepest despair. The story ends on a high note, I suppose.

This was a compelling read, and I liked the emotion of it all. But having finished it, I am perplexed. I'm not sure who the perfect target reader would be for this story.

Thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read and review Martyr.

I LOVED this book! It was such a beautiful story of forgiveness and the different ways we can live a life and die having touched someones life.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf for the eARC.

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.

So many layers of life to examine with this read. Its overall the search for meaning in one's life and death through friendship, love, loss, addiction, art, music, and memory. Honestly, there were a couple of times I wanted to shelf this book. Initially, I could not become all that invested in Cyrus; that is until the layers of his life began to be revealed. This is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

Thank you to Netgalley for the preview copy.

Honestly, I almost gave up several times in the first half. I found the narrative disjointed and largely uninteresting. I'm not sure why I stuck with it, but wow, it really picked up about 2/3 of the way through! The Orkideh narrative was intriguing from the start, and the author really "stuck the landing." By the end, I had a better understanding of the author's choices in the early stages of the novel.

I would have been unlikely to notice "Martyr!" on the list of new releases, so I'm glad I had the opportunity to read the prerelease copy.