Martyr

by: Kaveh Akbar

Goodreads description:

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others—in which a newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum.

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—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed. 

Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

Helen says: 🤓🤓🤓 1/2 (based on the story alone…the book was well written)

This book was poetic and beautifully written and may have been over my head in the “high brow” category. I have such a keen interest in all things Iranian. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that Iran went from being the most Westernized country in the Middle East to extreme conservative Muslim since the early 1980’s…I have some Iranian friends in Wilmington that left in exile never to return to their homeland…Also, my uncle Huber randomly worked in Iran for Mack Truck in 70’s and could speak some Farsi…Anytime I can get my hands on books that take place in Iran, I leap to read them….Anyway, on to the book (ha)…It was a fascinating story. The ending was a little predictable and too coincidental…Give it a read though.

Holly says: 🤓🤓🤓1/4

Another book with exceptional reviews that I struggled through. It is very original, and one reviewer said “it focuses on very specific stories while discussing universal feelings” – I think that is a great description. I am not sure what happened at the end, but I was definitely confused. I had the same feeling as I had at the end of Life of Pi – what in the world (or not in the world) just happened?

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