thoughts on martyr! by: Kaveh Akbar

“Martyr!”

By: Kaveh Akbar @kavehakbar.kavehakbar 

I had this book pre-ordered and delivered on launch day, and I devoured the book in a day or two, which I don’t typically do. 

To start, I’d like to say: I’ve been a fan of Kaveh Akbar since around 2016. The first time I remember coming across his work was in Muzzle Magazine with his poem “Supplication with Rabbit Skull and Bouquet”. Within the span of a year, I recall seeing his name in many literary publications I followed. Most of the time, names don’t stick in my mind but I distinctly remember thinking “Kaveh Akbar. Again. Who is this guy?”. His name was spontaneously ubiquitous. At least to me, he truly appeared to burst onto the scene (I say from the outskirts of literary academia— I may have been late to the party).

My attention was then drawn to his project, divedapper.com where Kaveh interviewed some of my favorite poets about their work, process, background, ethos, etc. His passion and enthusiasm for the craft was radiant and I was heliotropic. I even bought a divedapper t-shirt in its early days and got a nice little hand written note from Kaveh. I still use it as a bookmark sometimes 🔖 

Now that the fanboying is out of the way, I’ll get to this particular book, his debut novel, “Martyr!”, and wow, what a doozie. 

I believe the Penguin Random House website summarizes it well:

“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 the Persian Gulf 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. 

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others. “

4.5 /5 stars