Martyr! (National Book Award Finalist): A Novel
Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.
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Community Reviews
There was a lot going on in this book, but I appreciated the backstory on the main character and his family. The last 3-4 chapters, I believe, were so enticing that I couldn't stop listening! I had an inkling about the plot twist, but my mouth was still on the floor when I learned I was right.
Loved this book! So many sentences in here I want to save, and savor, and cry that I couldn't put words together like that. Pure genius.
Cyrus Shams is an Iranian American who grew up in Indiana with his father. When he was just a few months old and they were still living in Iran, his mother was on a plane that was shot down in a supposed accident by the American military. His grief-stricken father packs him up and starts a new life in America.
Cyrus grows up in the shadows of this loss and grief and even as a child has trouble sleeping and issues of depression. He is a poet and a writer but also an alcoholic and addict, in recovery. Again. He is searching for the meaning of life. He learns about an artist who is putting on her final show at Brooklyn Museum. She is dying, and she's going to share her dying with museum visitors. He decides he needs to go and meet her. He is inspired to write about martyrs, who have made a meaning of their life through death. He meets the artist, Orkideh, and she seemingly wants to talk to him longer than other visitors, asks him to come back. He comes back every day and is at once inspired and deflated by her.
Incredibly beautiful and heartbreaking, but also at times funny and entertaining. A masterpiece.
Cyrus Shams is an Iranian American who grew up in Indiana with his father. When he was just a few months old and they were still living in Iran, his mother was on a plane that was shot down in a supposed accident by the American military. His grief-stricken father packs him up and starts a new life in America.
Cyrus grows up in the shadows of this loss and grief and even as a child has trouble sleeping and issues of depression. He is a poet and a writer but also an alcoholic and addict, in recovery. Again. He is searching for the meaning of life. He learns about an artist who is putting on her final show at Brooklyn Museum. She is dying, and she's going to share her dying with museum visitors. He decides he needs to go and meet her. He is inspired to write about martyrs, who have made a meaning of their life through death. He meets the artist, Orkideh, and she seemingly wants to talk to him longer than other visitors, asks him to come back. He comes back every day and is at once inspired and deflated by her.
Incredibly beautiful and heartbreaking, but also at times funny and entertaining. A masterpiece.
What an intensely well-written modern book about mortality - the burden and beauty of being alive. Unhinged, ugly, eccentric, wry, and wonderful. The ending ripped me up. This book was a beautiful punch to the stomach. Oof.
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