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Martyr!

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Martyr!

By: Kaveh Akbar
Narrated by: Arian Moayed
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About this listen

Discover the life-affirming debut novel from acclaimed poet Kaveh Akbar: a love letter to the world and our search for meaning - in faith, art, ourselves and those we care for.

'Dazzling' Ann Patchett
‘Profoundly moving' Elif Shafak
‘Gorgeous’ Tommy Orange
‘Radiant’ Lauren Groff
‘Stunning’ John Green
‘Miraculous' The New York Times
‘Sensational’ Daily Mail
‘Kaleidoscopic’ The Guardian

Cyrus Shams has always been lost. He’s grown up tangled in the mysteries of his past – an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields, a haunting work of art by an exiled painter, and his mother, whose plane was shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was just a baby. Now, newly sober and maybe in love, he’s headed for an encounter that will transform everything he thought he knew. Can a final revelation change the truth of Cyrus's life?

Electrifying, funny, and all-consuming, Kaveh Akbar's Martyr! is a masterpiece.

A Book of the Year in The Observer, The New York Times, TIME, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic and The New Yorker, and shorlisted for the Waterstones Debut Prize for Fiction

 Best of 2024 City Life Family Life Friendship Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Islamic Heritage Literary Fiction Urban World Literature Funny

Critic reviews

I will carry this story, and the people in it, with me for the rest of my life. (John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars)
Smart, dazzling, different... a novel of depth and complexity, tragedy and humour . . . This book is thrilling. There's no other word for it. It's like watching the novel itself be reinvented (Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake)
Playful, soulful, kaleidoscopic, honest and profoundly moving. It is also wholly original, and the writing is brilliant, full of chutzpah and heart (Elif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees)
Kaveh Akbar is a radiant soul, a poet so agile and largehearted it comes as no surprise that his first leap into fiction is elegant, dizzying, playful. (Lauren Groff, author of The Matrix)
In Cyrus, Akbar has created an indelible protagonist, haunted, searching, utterly magnetic. But it speaks to Akbar’s storytelling gifts that Martyr! is both a riveting character study and piercing family saga . . . what Akbar pulls off in Martyr! is nothing short of miraculous.
Kaveh Akbar renders the full spectrum of life, and death, with great beauty and care (Raven Leilani, author of Luster)
An absolute jewel of a novel. A diamond. I haven’t loved a book this much in years. Kaveh’s writing is so thoroughly powerful and gorgeous you can feel it from where dreams come . . . This book does everything. (Tommy Orange, author of There, There)
Martyr! is an astounding debut . . . It feels like holding magic in your hands (Aimee Walsh, The Irish Times)
It's so, so incredible (Kaia Gerber)
I haven't stopped thinking about it. Sensational.
A kaleidoscopic debut . . . a novel that comes at you from every conceivable direction
Martyr! will stay in my soul for good—a fever dream, a reckoning, a heartbreak, a shattering and mending, a delight—its double-helix of dreams and conversation now part of my own DNA (Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams)
A brilliant debut... simultaneously funny and piercing... Akbar writes beautifully
Akbar is a black-belt storyteller, and MARTYR! is a page-turner I couldn’t put down. Buy this book! (Mary Karr, author of The Liars' Club)
Akbar’s debut is full of love, fury, humour and wisdom. Protagonist Cyrus Shams . . . is coming straight for your heart
I laughed out loud
I can’t remember the last time a book made me feel like this. Martyr! is simply extraordinary. Kaveh Akbar has written a novel that will stay with me forever. (Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed)
Brilliant
Reading Martyr! is a delight
All stars
Most relevant
Why would a chicken farm in indiana advertise for jobs in Iran at the height of bad blood between the countries? And how would this be allowed by the Iranian regime? And even if somehow, improbably, this were to happen, how could this chicken farm secure work visas for unskilled Iranian laborers? I really couldn't get past this ridiculous plot hole, but I persevered only to find an even bigger plot hole at the end.

*spoiler alert*

You mean to tell me a mom discovers her long lost son -- who she deserted -- in the most improbable circumstances during her dying days. And instead of reconnecting with this person and taking advantage of this miricle, she chooses to kill herself -- either in the name of art or for some other personal reason that is never addressed? This decision is not even analysed by the protagonist. It is completely glossed over.

Some of the writing is beautiful, most of it is way overdescribed and wordy. It's one metaphor after another. So in short, I don't see what the hoopla is about. It was OK but not a classic by any means.

Major Plot Holes

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10/10 narration
the novel itself is to be admired for it’s technicality and wild imagination but personally found it too confused, and long winding. The twist comes in too late, the addiction part though interesting is disturbing and let’s not even talk about the ending…

Great narration, wild imaginative writing but didn’t really do it for me

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The best reading of any audio book I’ve ever heard - and a good novel, too.

Great story - even better performance

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"Love is a room that opens when you step into it"

Cyrus has a plan to write a book about martyrs, and he is inspired by an artist Orchida who is creating a live artwork about her own impending death, and travels to meet her. Having lost his own parents in difficult circumstances and while recovering from substance addiction, he seeks the answers to a life he feels has had little purpose, looking to find meaning in the end of life instead .

Told through his own past, his family 's past and through dreams, Akbar deftly weaves stories within stories about art and death. Akbar leads Cyrus on a pilgrimage of experience that tackles loss, identity and most of all he offers hope even in times of despair.

Death is a door to explore hope

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l loved everything about it - thanks Anthony Jeselnik for the recommendation, would never have picked it but it was as good as he said it was

Beautiful poetic language

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