Wow. This was utterly unique. Cyrus came to Indiana from Iran as a child with his father after his mother was killed in a plane crash. This book looks back at his life as well as who his parents were before he was born. Now a recovering alcoholic, he is obsessed with martyrs and writes poems about them as he contemplates if he should become a martyr himself. When he reads about a terminally ill artist who is spending her last days dying in the Brooklyn Art Museum, he goes to meet her. This was dark yet had humor in it and kept me engaged until the end.

Where do I begin... Martyr! is unlike anything I've read before and I have to admit that much of it went over my head. Still, I think it's a great piece of literature that I'm sure will find its ideal reader.

This book is all about structure: with each section it changes the point of view from the omniscient third person narrator back to first person (sometimes a different first person than before) to poems to investigation reports following the downing of an Iranian plane by the US military in late 1980. Despite all this, the book doesn't feel disjointed at all.

Not much happens in the book plot-wise, but it's a powerful piece of literature that explores addiction and sobriety, love and loss, death, grief and why life is worth living.
For someone who doesn't like reading about addiction, this will be a tough read. Akbar's writing is unflinching and his descriptions of what addiction does to a body are vivid, maybe even grotesque at times.

Overall, I think this book will stay with me for some time. It left me with a lot to think about, including beautiful quotes like this one: "Love was a room that appeared when you stepped into it. Cyrus understood that now, and stepped."

Thank you to NetGalley and A.A. Knopf for the ARC!

This is stellar debut novel. I loved the writing so so much. Just glorious sentences. The book switches between perspectives and the voices all sounded the same with the same tone and that annoyed me a hair. Overall thrilled about this book and think it’ll be on lots of lists come years end.

MARTYR! by Kaveh Akbar was my last read of 2023, which I requested largely based on its striking cover. I was also very interested in the formatting concept of plot, poems, and interstitials as I am finding format to be a bigger draw for me.

I will say there’s a lot here to like. As individual pieces, a lot of this works; however, I thought this was lacking cohesion. While some of this may be impacted by eARC formatting issues, I didn’t think everything blended.

Trying my very best not to spoil, the back third also did not end up working for me. I was more disappointed than gagged.

Finally, for a novel by a poet about a poet writing a novel, I was not wowed by the language.

Overall, I did like this, and please check out the lovely reviews I mentioned earlier!

Awesome writing. Even though it seems disjointed at times, I like the way Akbar weaves together each character’s story. So much angst in Cyrus’s quest to find himself after his mother’s loss and his addiction. However, the structure of this novel with the interspersion of poetry really helped to make this a good read. Thank you NetGalley for providing the ARC.

Martyr!
Kaveh Akbar


The reader meet Cyrus Shams immediately. He is a Persian American (or Persian and American) who came to the United States with his father, Ali. Ali worked in an Indiana poultry farm enduring this horrible job. He left Iran after his mother, Roya, died. She was the victim of mistakenly fired United States missile when she was a passenger on a domestic Iranian flight.

When Ali dies, Cyrus becomes an orphan. The reader meets Cyrus when he is thirty, trying to escape his realities with drugs and alcohol. He desperately wants his life to become meaningful. There are two women in his life. One is Zee, his lover and friend and the other is fascinating. She is an American artist who is also Iranian American. However she has a terminal illness. Cyrus finds her online and she lives her days in the Brooklyn Museum attracting people who want to talk to her.

This is an intense novel that is unusual and intelligent. However, there are too many coincidences, dreams and unclear narratives. I found it difficult to follow at times.

My gratitude to NetGalley and Knopf for this pre-published book. All opinions expressed are my own.

"An alphabet, like a life, is a finite set of shapes. With it, one can produce almost anything."

I went into this book with almost no expectations besides a lifelong interest in Iranian culture and the recommendation of a friend who had read it, but I was absolutely blown away. This book contains so much, and it is written in the beautiful language of a poet.

Cyrus grows up in the Midwestern U.S. with his single father, after his mother was killed by the American military, who shot down an Iranian passenger plane when he was 2 years old. The specter of U.S. empire hangs heavy over him because of this, but so does the concept of dying, both a "meaningful" death and a completely meaningless one, such as his mother's murder. Cyrus struggles to get his head above water, and is a recovering addict who loosely thinks of ending his life, maybe after he writes something about death and martyrdom. He is determined to make his death meaningful, unlike both of his parents.

The novel moves back and forth in time and space, from his parents' youth, to Cyrus' dream scenarios with celebrities, historical figures, and family members. A lot of reviewers said this didn't work for them, but I found them to be interesting glimpses of Cyrus' unconscious, the kind of imagining we have when we are desperate to reconnect with lost loved ones or make meaning out of the unimaginable. Cyrus' uncle was in the Iran-Iraq war and had the most bananas role you could imagine, which plays a big role in the conception of death here. We also see the queer backstory of his mother, and this is tied together in a beautiful way with the love of Cyrus' life, his best friend Zee.

This is a must read, and I am so glad I had a chance to read an early copy. Highly recommend.

Cyrus Shams is a recovering addict, poet, and orphan living in the Midwest and searching for a way to give his life (and death) some meaning. Haunted by the senseless death of his mother, whose plane was shot down on accident by the American military when Cyrus was a baby, he embarks on researching and writing a book on martyrs. Woven in with Cyrus' suffering and searching are stories of the lives, sacrifices, and longings of his mother, father, uncle, friends, other poets, and an enigmatic performance artist whom Cyrus becomes compelled to talk to about what meaning can be found in dying. Akbar's first novel touches on many of the same themes as his poetry - addiction, queerness, Iranian-American identity, the history of Persian poets - and his sentences here sparkle with the same cleverness, humor, observation, and empathy. While the main character's destructive personality and self-absorption may be off-putting to some readers (and all too relatable to others), this novel is a pleasure to read and is bursting with language and humanity.

Martyr! is a trip with grief, through grief, and a man named Cyrus. From a post-revolution Iran to the US under the Trump administration, his story and his quest to make meaning of death are woven together with the lives of his mother Roya, his father Ali, uncle Arash, and a few other with brilliance and care by Akbar. Martyr! is an affecting and poetic debut that will leave you to ruminate on what it mean to die and what it means to be alive.

First book of the year! And wow it was really good. It’s about this Iranian American man, Cyrus, that is on his sobriety journey and hyperfixated on having a death that means something. The story is told pretty disjointedly (a little confusing at times) along a timeline and told from many perspective it’s also kinda sparse on plot but lyrically written and I highlighted so many incredible lines. Being a martyr and having a death that means something special to you or others isn’t something I have ever thought about and it was so interesting to see the thought process and conversations Cyrus had with others to cement and change his thinking.
Overall it was an interesting, thought provoking, gorgeously written book-it comes out Jan 23
Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf for an eARC

After publishing a few acclaimed poetry collections, Kaveh Akbar’s first novel, Martyr!, is to be released later this month. The novel starts with Cyrus Shams, a poet, recovering drug and alcohol addict, and someone is trying find meaning, not only in life but in death. His mother is killed in 1988 on Flight 655, an Iranian commercial flight shot down by the United States military. He is a baby at the time. Afterward, he and his father move from Iran to Indiana, where his father worked at a chicken farm. Cyrus grows up, but he does not grow out of the feeling of his mother, and eventually the death of his father as soon as he goes to college. Martyr! is Cyrus’s journey post family and post drugs to figure out if his mother and father’s death has meaning at all. This journey leads him to the idea of writing a book about martyrs, which leads him and his friend Zee from Indiana to Brooklyn, where an Iranian-born artist is publicly dying of breast cancer. She is at the Brooklyn Museum meeting people every day to talk about whatever they want until she eventually dies. Her hospice is on display for art. Cyrus wants to know if her death is art, thus making it more meaningful than other deaths. Meeting her changes everything for him.

This story is not straight forward or complete. We are given large chunks of the story, not only Cyrus’s life, but the life of his parents, what his mother felt when she was boarding the plane on her fateful trip, how military service messed up Cyrus’s uncle, and how his father felt after losing his wife, but we are also allowed to fill in the blanks. Chapters are written from the perspective of everyone, from Cyrus, from Cyrus’s mother, father, and uncle, and from the dying artist herself. There are chapters that are fictionalized conversations between famous people that Cyrus uses to help him fall asleep at night (which we could have used a few more of these). We are also given snippets of the book of martyrs that Cyrus is writing: poems and paragraphs explaining the depths of what death can mean. Cyrus has collected all of these pieces, and he hopes this can mean something.

The writing is fantastic, and the story is gripping. I was more invested in these characters and this story than any other book in a long time. There are some moments when Kaveh Akbar writes very deep conversations between two characters and the narrative does seem to stall a bit, but most of the novel is flawless, exciting, and quite possibly one of the best books I will read this year.

I reviewed this as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is another unexpectedly wonderful book coming out in early 2024. I've read Akbar's poetry before this, and was interested at how it would make the transition to a novel structure. We get a fantastic situation where the poetry in the book is part of a project that the main character is working on, and the poetry that's included, along with short writing excerpts from the project, appear scattered throughout the book. Very much a story about societal projections and who's the real story, along with a fantastic, unexpected queer angle to the overall plot. Pick this up when this comes out at the end of January 2024, you won't regret it.

Kaveh Akbar's Martyr is a moving, complex reflection on finding meaning in one's life after loss and addiction. Cyrus Shams is an Iranian-American young man struggling with what his future should be after a difficult childhood. His mother died tragically in a passenger airline crash (the US shot at it, they said mistakenly), and his father moved the two of them to Indiana, taking a job at a chicken processing plant- drinking himself to sleep at night in order to get up early the next morning for work. Soon after leaving for college, Cyrus' father passes away, which he interprets as him just hanging on until he thought Cyrus was independent enough. Cyrus quickly falls into an unhealthy pattern of drug use and alcoholism, though as readers, we meet him after becoming clean. He is a poet and is trying to figure out what his next piece should be about and he mines his feelings about death in his family, historical martyrs, and his own complicated feelings about wanting to stay alive to start a collection about martyrs. He sees notice for a piece about an artist with terminal cancer, who, as her final art installation, plans to sit in an art museum, talking with people, as she lives out her final days on Earth. Multiple threads laid out during the book start to coalesce, leaving a satisfying ending which brought tears to my eyes. I loved this, and I hope others experience this moving book.

Thank you to Knopf for the advance reader copy via NetGalley in exchange for honest review.

While I didn't always connect with the story and it was a bit out of my comfort zone, I certainly appreciated the writing style and frenetic sense of storytelling. Would recommend it to anyone looking for a thought-provoking and, at times, challenging read.

Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a copy.

I won’t lie, I struggled a bit with this read. It is so different from anything that I have experienced and from what I normally read. Part novel, part poetry, always well written. Cyrus, Persian by birth but raised in the USA, ironically after his mother dies in a commercial airplane shot down by the USA. His father works a menial job in northern Indiana at a commercial chicken farm until he dies shortly after Cyrus graduates from college. Cyrus is sober (drugs and alcohol) and struggling with his life and future and is obsessed with martyrs - but not in the stereotypical way Iranian soldiers are thought to be.

I was first hooked by the cover, then by the title, and finally by the first line. I am having a hard time believing this is a debut because this was a complete knock out!
This story follows Cyrus, obsessed with death and ensuring his death means something, swallowed whole by grief and anything that numbs the pain of being alive. We also see vignettes of the people around him, mostly his parents and his friend Zee, in addition to people he dreams, creating beautifully complex scenes and dialogue that often bends reality.
Ultimately, this book asks us to consider the meaning of death, of life, and of language or art’s ability to render either of those things in a meaningful way. I’d say my only critique was that the conclusion/“twist” felt a bit tidy, lots of coincidences and fate at play that verged on being distracting. I’m also feeling a bit confused about the ending, but in a kind of fun way where I already know I’ll be thinking about it for a while.
If you’re looking for a character-driven novel that explores lots of existential questions, this is going to be your book of the year.
Thanks to Knopf and NetGalley for the eARC of Martyr!

Wow. What. A. Debut.

This book had me thinking and feeling from beginning to end with a running question of belonging and finding meaning in our lives and the lives that have come before us. Loss, grief, a greater purpose to make sense of tragedy...we can all relate to those struggles. There's humor and art as a metaphor for life and while those two probably seem incompatible, Akbar masterfully melds them together so that I was smiling one moment and tearing up the next. Structurally, the novel is varied and interesting to experience with snippets from a book the main character, Cyrus, is writing, along with poetry and multiple points of view with backstories that add a richness to every page. This will sit with me for a long time. I can't wait for others to read it so we can discuss. Go get this one.

Poetry is not my forte, so I was a bit unsure starting Martyr!, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it very, very readable. This is another novel about an artist—in this case a poet named Cyrus Shams—going through an existential crisis. That’s a crowded subgenre, but Martyr! manages to stand out.

What Akbar really excels at here is dialogue. So snappy and funny. Truly funny! I laughed a lot. Cyrus is a lovely protagonist to be with as a reader.

Unfortunately, there’s a decent chunk of this book spent away from Cyrus, with entire flashback chapters following his father and mother and uncle scattered all throughout. These digressions from Cyrus’ story flesh out his family nicely but never stop feeling like over-long interludes. The chapters themselves are just as well written as the main story, but I always wanted to get back to Cyrus as quickly as possible. Martyr! pulled me in quickly. I completely bought the characters and dialogue and emotions and it felt on track to be a new favorite up until it became obvious that this novel was trying to be more epic than I expected (or wanted).

I had a nice time with Martyr!, and would recommend it to a lot of people looking for a new literary novel, but it’s frustrating to think that there is a stronger novel in here that isn’t so sprawling.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!

This book is spectacular. I love when poets write prose, because what they write always comes out so beautifully. Not only was the book beautifully written, the story itself was engaging and spoke to me on a deep, human level. I can't wait for this book to come out so everyone can read it!

This book felt like nothing else. I was immediately gripped—I wanted to keep reading but didn’t want the book to end. Akbar’s writing manages to be funny, deeply moving, and tender all at once.