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Martyr!

2024

by Kaveh Akbar

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar is an electrifying, funny, and wholly original novel that heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction. The story follows Cyrus Shams, a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, who is guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings on a remarkable search for a family secret. This journey leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum.

Cyrus grapples 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 at a factory farm. As a drunk, an addict, and a poet, Cyrus's obsession with martyrs drives him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death and toward his mother, through a painting that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, and others.

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