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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About this listen

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.

©2024 Kaveh Akbar (P)2024 Random House Audio
Family Life Fiction Funny Heartfelt Thought-Provoking
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Critic reviews

“Incandescent . . . 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 . . . Akbar is a dazzling writer, with bars like you wouldn't believe . . . What Akbar pulls off in Martyr! is nothing short of miraculous.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A dazzling, thrilling debut novel about identity and loss . . . Martyr! thrillingly depicts why we cobble selves from alloys of words and cultures.”Minneapolis Star Tribune

“A brilliant and blisteringly alive novel about not just how we go on, but also why. Kaveh Akbar's first novel is so stunning, so wrenching, and so beautifully written that reading it for the first time, I kept forgetting to breathe. 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

What listeners say about Martyr!

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Original

The writing is cleverly sticky, doesn’t let your attention drift at all. It felt original and funny and so very well written.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Phenomenal

Beautiful, relatable, emotional. I was not prepared for the way the ending took my breath away. Would happily read anything and everything by this author.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

I may have to read the written version

Fantastic performance, but I can’t help thinking it would mean more coming off the page.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Loved it!

I just finished listening to it and will start all over again, because I didn’t want it to end.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Beautiful writing

Tedious descriptions of death, addition, isolation. Would have liked these chapters to have been edited. We get it!

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Brilliant story and writing

The performance of this book might have actually improved it. It was brilliant and magical.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Storyline, delivery, content, creativity, depth

here and now— all there is to life. So simple yet a very complex concept to understand and practice. This book is beyond any words.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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Whew

What a wonderful story and narrator! Very interesting that explored many issues such as life, death, queerness, but mostly love!

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    4 out of 5 stars

Exceptional reader! Difficult read.

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.

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Beautiful story

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

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3 people found this helpful