Martyr! Audiobook By Kaveh Akbar cover art

Martyr!

A Novel

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Martyr!

By: Kaveh Akbar
Narrated by: Arian Moayed
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR • A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

“Kaveh Akbar is one of my favorite writers. Ever.” —Tommy Orange, Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of There There

“The best novel you'll ever read about the joy of language, addiction, displacement, martyrdom, belonging, homesickness.” —Lauren Groff, best-selling author of Matrix and Fates and Furies

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.

Accolades & Awards

Best of 2024
Best of 2024 Family Life Islamic Heritage Literary Fiction Thought-Provoking Fiction Heartfelt Inspiring Literature & Fiction Genre Fiction Funny Suspenseful
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Beautiful Writing • Lyrical Prose • Distinct Character Voices • Compelling Story • Philosophical Depth

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Readers facility in moving between voices, accents, languages, and modes of story-telling was exceptional.
Story was gripping, compelling, and remains with me long after I finished listening — even though there were long passages that made me wince, with the main character’s convoluted introspection (“is this just my ego?”). Same with dialogues between characters who havejust experienced life-changing revelations or losses, which move almost immediately into abstract reflections and literary references.
Though I almost stopped listening after about 2 hours, I feel richly rewarded in the end.

Exceptional reader! Difficult read.

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Loved everything about this book. Feel in love with the characters and the writing. The performance was spot on as well. Must listen.

Beautiful story

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This book would have been better as a series of short stories. While the writing is lyrical the plot was disjointed and the main character did not seem to develop much throughout the book. Good narrator and performance.

Overhyped

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loved this book. it's so unique and delicious. Will definitely listen to again. the narration is amazing as well, great accents and character impersonation.

Artistic and raw, felt so real

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I liked the prose; the writer has a beautiful, solid literary pen.

The narrator detracts from the writing. I really like Arian Moayed as an actor, but as a narrator, it is a different story. He tries too hard, performing, wanting to give the words life. The words are beautiful, and his overdone, exaggerated accents is a disservice to the writing. I didn't like how he made the Iranian male characters' speech sound clownish, uneducated, and simply ridiculous. I should have read the book instead of listening to it.

The story takes an interesting twist in the second part of the book. The book is depicted as the story of an immigrant, and it is also very much a story of addiction and growing up with a single dad without extended family and without a community, perhaps paving the way to addiction, a sense of loneliness, and a painful search for meaning.

The first few chapters are challenging and disturbing, as the character lashes out painfully and angrily at life. I almost stopped reading it, but I am glad to have continued.

The writer gives us a very narrow-angle view of Iran and Iranians. The characters in Iran don't come across as sympathetic; only the two women are portrayed as compelling as they are victimized people.

Several references to urination at different parts of the story baffled me. Not sure what it signifies.

Bad narrator-beautiful writing

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