
Martyr!
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Arian Moayed
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By:
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Kaveh Akbar
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 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 AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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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
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Overall
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A thirty-four-year-old American woman—a secret agent—is sent to do dirty work in France. “Sadie Smith” is how the narrator introduces herself to her lover, to the rural commune of French subversives on whom she is keeping tabs, and to the reader. Sadie has met her love, Lucien, a young and well-born Parisian, by “cold bump”—making him believe the encounter was accidental. Like everyone Sadie targets, Lucien is useful to her and used by her. Sadie operates by strategy and dissimulation, based on what her “contacts”—shadowy figures in business and government—instruct.
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Author should not have been the reader
- By Raj A. on 09-11-24
By: Rachel Kushner
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James
- A Novel
- By: Percival Everett
- Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
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Can we ever be free
- By J. Stirling on 04-04-24
By: Percival Everett
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You Dreamed of Empires
- A Novel
- By: Álvaro Enrigue, Natasha Wimmer - translator
- Narrated by: Gabriel Porras
- Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés enters the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he will meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures.
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Confusing and Difficult to Understand
- By francine steelman on 03-02-24
By: Álvaro Enrigue, and others
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Wandering Stars
- A Novel
- By: Tommy Orange
- Narrated by: Shaun Taylor-Corbett, MacLeod Andrews, Alma Cuervo, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola.
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Beautiful writing and performance of realistic native family saga
- By ReallyNelie on 07-12-24
By: Tommy Orange
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The Safekeep
- By: Yael van der Wouden
- Narrated by: Stina Nielsen, Saskia Maarleveld
- Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.
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Beautiful. Unexpected.
- By cm on 01-15-25
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Bluebeard
- By: Jim Clemente, Peter McDonnell
- Narrated by: Joseph Fiennes, Karen David, Holt McCallany, and others
- Length: 3 hrs and 38 mins
- Original Recording
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In 1919, Kathryn Wombacher finds a lonely-hearts ad placed by one Walter Andrew: "Would be pleased to correspond with a refined young lady or widow. Object, matrimony.” Kathryn and Walter fall in love and marry within weeks. What Kathryn doesn’t know...is that her new husband is really James “Bluebeard” Watson, a notorious West Coast serial killer who catfished and married 22 women, murdering 10.
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Performances
- By HappyMom on 05-24-24
By: Jim Clemente, and others
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Help Wanted
- A Novel
- By: Adelle Waldman
- Narrated by: Amanda Ronconi
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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When store manager Big Will announces he is leaving, the members of Movement spot an opportunity. If they play their cards right, one of them just might land a management job, with all the stability and possibility for advancement that that implies. The members of Team Movement―including a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging on to her “cool kid” status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path―band together to set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion.
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Compelling story of life in retail
- By MRM on 08-20-24
By: Adelle Waldman
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Our Evenings
- A Novel
- By: Alan Hollinghurst
- Narrated by: Prasanna Puwanarajah
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Dave Win, the son of a Burmese man he’s never met and a British dressmaker, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates.
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Sublime Collaboration
- By Phip Herrick on 11-20-24
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Voyage of the Damned
- By: Frances White
- Narrated by: Nathan Foad
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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For a thousand years, Concordia has maintained peace between its provinces. To mark this incredible feat, the emperor’s ship embarks upon a twelve-day voyage to the sacred Goddess’s Mountain. Aboard are the twelve heirs of the provinces of Concordia, each graced with a unique and secret magical ability known as a Blessing. All except one: Ganymedes Piscero—class clown, slacker and all-around disappointment.
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Twists and turns and I didn’t see that coming
- By C. Miranda on 09-02-24
By: Frances White
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Annie Bot
- A Novel
- By: Sierra Greer
- Narrated by: Jennifer Jill Araya
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Annie Bot was created to be the perfect girlfriend for her human owner Doug. Designed to satisfy his emotional and physical needs, she has dinner ready for him every night, wears the pert outfits he orders for her, and adjusts her libido to suit his moods. True, she’s not the greatest at keeping Doug’s place spotless, but she’s trying to please him. She’s trying hard.
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Good, but not great
- By Katie Ramey on 03-25-24
By: Sierra Greer
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Orbital
- By: Samantha Harvey
- Narrated by: Sarah Naudi
- Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A slender novel of epic power and the winner of the Booker Prize 2024, Orbital deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men traveling through space. Selected for one of the last space station missions of its kind before the program is dismantled, these astronauts and cosmonauts—from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—have left their lives behind to travel at a speed of over seventeen thousand miles an hour as the earth reels below.
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Dull
- By ELLEZEE on 02-03-24
By: Samantha Harvey
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Colored Television
- A Novel
- By: Danzy Senna
- Narrated by: Kristen Ariza
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Jane has high hopes her life is about to turn around. After years of living precariously, she, her painter husband, Lenny, and their two kids have landed a stint as house sitters in a friend’s luxurious home high in the hills above Los Angeles, a gig that coincides magically with Jane’s sabbatical. If she can just finish her latest novel, Nusu Nusu, the centuries-spanning epic Lenny refers to as her “mulatto War and Peace,” she’ll have tenure and some semblance of stability and success within her grasp. But things don’t work out quite as hoped.
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Frustrating
- By Carolyn White on 12-12-24
By: Danzy Senna
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Rejection
- Fiction
- By: Tony Tulathimutte
- Narrated by: Micky Shiloah, Allyson Ryan, Quincy Surasmith, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet.
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Trigger warning for one chapter, otherwise really creative
- By Amazon Customer on 10-06-24
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Blue Ruin
- A Novel
- By: Hari Kunzru
- Narrated by: Hari Kunzru
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Once, Jay was an artist. Shortly after graduating from his London art school, he was tipped for greatness, a promising career already taking shape before him. Now, undocumented in the United States, he lives out of his car and makes a living as an essential worker, delivering groceries in a wealthy area of upstate New York. The pandemic is still at its height—the greater public panicked in quarantine—and though he has returned to work, Jay hasn’t recovered from the effects of a recent COVID case.
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An excellent dead ringer of the ridiculous depths of the art world
- By JLB on 11-15-24
By: Hari Kunzru
What listeners say about Martyr!
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- Dolce Momento
- 02-17-24
Very unique
An unexpected story, which is beautifully written, in the voice of various characters, and a third party narrator. It explores a multitude of themes, including addiction, guilt, racism, loss, sexuality, dreams, escapism, art, war, and the immigrant experience. It resonates as deeply personal and intense, and in many ways is strange in a wonderful way, original and unique.
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- L. M. Harvey
- 02-18-24
Gorgeous language, riveting story revealed at just the right pace, richly developed characters and perfectly performed
Didn’t dislike anything. Poetic but narrative drives you forward with perfect narrator…gives a moving, clear performance that serves the story well
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- Devan H.
- 07-30-24
Captivating
Story held me tight and hyper-focused through every twist and turn. Truly emotionally captivating.
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- SK
- 08-05-24
Fantastic
Loved the stories. Factual and fantastical. The narrator did an excellent job too. Beautiful work! Thank you!!!!
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- Derek Meyer
- 07-04-24
Whispering
why is the narrator whispering instead of reading the book? poor form. was very hard to hear even on headphones.
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- Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
- 07-03-24
startling
this novel has its own rhythm, it's own nonlinearity. the plot is strong enough to be plot-driven, but we get so much more. a real treasure
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- Shima
- 08-14-24
A familiar memoir for many Iranian immigrants
I like how the story was shaped and particularly found the humorous fantasies (the dialogues and stories about ancient poets) interesting. The story grows as you go through chapters and keep you away from
putting the book aside. I have a mix feeling about the ending and believe it could have ended stronger and maybe different (?)
In overall it’s an app
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- CMTPW
- 08-14-24
Lots to think about
Many topics to think about. Some beautiful lines. Sometimes the story took too many turns and I lost the thread.
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- Edward Foley
- 10-15-24
Devastatingly beautiful
This amazing work weaves an intricate story from the strands of quite distinctive lives that results in a brilliantly woven narrative. The language is so rich and filled with so many linguistic turns that I ended up bookmarking this work more than any since On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. Not only displaying literary finesse, the book faces some of the most daunting challenges of being human head on with with wisdom and wit. The book should be required reading in cross-cultural philosophy courses. Finally, the narration was completely captivating. The vocal oscillation between male and female characters, USonians and Iranians was credible and riveting. The ending broke my heart and lifted my spirit. Most amazing writing.
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- Jaye Nelia
- 11-19-24
Wrackingly beautiful and painfully funny!
I can’t even….this is a kind of story about all stories, about how every person you know or see is living a story…and it reminded me to be careful, to be clear and kind with others because all the stories are spinning our experiences around even as we have them. That’s how I felt reading it, though this may just be me. A book this great invites you to feel any and everything as it goes deeper, gets bigger, and surprises you again and again. I couldn’t get a good grip on it and after awhile I didn’t want to.
I don’t think there’s a need to describe the plot here. Listen to the first few minutes and the hook is in. Akbar is brilliant with words and ingenious with images, and I found the presentation of his culture stunning — his love-hate for it, its love-hate for him. I will certainly buy a copy of Martyr so I can experience it on the page, but I’ll also listen to many portions again and again. Also, the reader was magnificent. I could feel him loving the words he spoke, and convincing me with every character he played.
Am I making this book sound beautiful and boring? Believe me, woven in and around all the perfect words is a wild, passion-driven story full of risks, peopled primarily by college students on all kinds of fanciful drugs. Funny? Omg. So funny. I have no idea how this writer crammed so much detailed hilarity as well as longing and suffering into a book of average length. All I’m saying is Kaveh Akbar is my new dude!
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