Quizlit’s Book of the Month April 2024 is Martyr! by Kavah Akbar. His electrifying debut novel follows a newly sober poet adrift in the American Midwest, trying to come to terms with his mother’s tragic death decades prior, as the mystery of who she really was begins to unravel.
Book of the Month April 2024
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
Cyrus Shams is lost.
Ever since his mother’s plane was senselessly shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was just a baby, Cyrus has been grappling with her death. Now, newly sober, he is set to learn the truth of her life.
When an encounter with a dying artist leads Cyrus towards the mysteries of his past – an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as an Angel of Death, a haunting work of art by an exiled painter – he finds himself once again caught up in the story of his mother, who may not have been who or what she seemed. As Cyrus searches for meaning in the scattered clues of his life, a final revelation transforms everything he thought he knew.
“An existential comedy about the difficulty of finding beauty in banality and sense in suffering . . . In writing this novel about a would-be martyr lost amid the banal clichés and tired stories Americans tell themselves in order to live, Akbar has shown that the only way to make meaning out of meaninglessness is to become the author of our own story.” —The Atlantic
“Akbar’s debut is full of love, fury, humor and wisdom. Protagonist Cyrus Shams-poet, recovering alcoholic, son of one of the passengers- is coming straight for your heart.” —People
“A deep-feeling, beautifully bruised debut novel . . . [Martyr!] reads like the book that Akbar has been building up to most of his life.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“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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Also by Kaveh Akbar
About the Author
Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1989. He moved to the United States when he was two years old, and grew up across the United States. He received his bachelor’s degree from Purdue, his MFA from Butler University, and his PhD in creative writing from Florida State University.
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 and Calling a Wolf a Wolf , in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic. He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine . In 2024, Knopf published Martyr!, Kaveh’s first novel.
If you enjoyed our Book of the Month April 2024, check out the exciting New Book Releases for March 2024
