MARTYR! by Kaveh Akbar
MARTYR!
by Kaveh Akbar
Presents
Farhang’s First Book Club Selection
New York Times Bestseller
By author KAVEH AKBAR
Watch our full book club conversation now
“Nothing short of miraculous.”
— The New York Times
“Martyr! is so much its own creation that comparisons don't help.”
— NPR
“Almost violently artful, full of sentences that stab, pierce, and slice with their beauty.”
— The New Yorker
“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
ABOUT MARTYR!
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR FOR 2024 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
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.
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.
About Kaveh Akbar
Kaveh Akbar's poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf 2021) and Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James 2017), in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry 2016). He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine (Penguin Classics 2022). In 2024, Knopf published Martyr!, Kaveh's first New York Times bestselling novel.
In 2020 Kaveh was named Poetry Editor of The Nation. The recipient of honors including multiple Pushcart Prizes, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, and the Levis Reading Prize, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and teaches at the University of Iowa and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson. In 2014, Kaveh founded Divedapper, a home for dialogues with the most vital voices in American poetry. With Sarah Kay and Claire Schwartz, he wrote a weekly column for the Paris Review called "Poetry RX."
About Abdi Nazemian
Abdi Nazemian is the author of five novels including Like a Love Story, a Stonewall Honor book, and The Chandler Legacies. His latest novel, Only This Beautiful Moment, was the 2024 Stonewall Award Winner from the American Library Association. For his literary work, he has also received a Lambda Literary Award. His screenwriting credits include movies such as The Artist's Wife and The Quiet, and television shows including Ordinary Joe. He has been a producer, executive producer or associate producer on a number of films, including Call Me By Your Name and Little Woods. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband, their two children, and their dog Disco.
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