Award winning Iranian/Amer poet Kaveh Akbar's debut novel, MARTYR is a Nat'l Book Award Finalist (2026). The protagonist/anti-hero, Cyrus Sham, is an infant when his mom gets on the infamous commercial flight in Iran to visit her brother which is short down by the US Govt. Akbar blends historical events, as with this fatal flight in 1988. Cyrus' dad wants to leave Iran. He finds an ad for work in Iowa at a chicken factory and decides to immigrate to give his son a better life as in many immigrant families. In the states, Cyrus' dad has no life outside work except watching sports on TV and drinking gin nightly to fall asleep. Cyrus is an outsider at school but becomes a good student earning a scholarship to IA Univ. Totally abstemious until then, Cyrus finds his major outside poetry in drink, drugs and sex. This is a tale of queer man's search for sobriety, his place in the world and his families legacy. Dealing with AA meetings and his sponsor is as engaging as the amazing family saga that dazzles as it unravels. At odds with with no career, obsessed with his mother's senseless death and martyrdom, Cyrus learns of a performance artist, Okediah, who casts herself as an exhibit in the Brooklyn Art Museum to speak with visitors during her final days from cancer. The novel's macabre fascination with death is actually confronting the absurdities of living. "living happened till it didn't. There was no choice in it. To say no to a new day would be unthinkable. So each morning you said yes, then stepped into the consequence." Cyrus tells Okediah, "I've been wanting to write about how to make a death useful." Cyrus realizes, "the mortal sin of the martyr must be pride, the vanity, the hubris to believe not only that your death could mean more than your living, but that your death could mean more than death itself-which because it is inevitable, means nothing." Through Akbar's skillful writing we garner the story of Cyrus' family. His uncle rode the battle fields of fallen soldiers disguised as a martyr. We delve into tangents of Cyrus dreams with odd celebrity pairings in conversation. We also learn alongside Cyrus of his mother's startling life. The story weaves among the lives of Cyrus and family. From his family we garner the hardships and degradations of life in Iran in the 80s. Throughout, Cyrus remains steadfast in his pursuit of art which proves somewhat futile. Cyrus realizes "He was not made for the world in which he lived, that art and writing had gotten him only trivially closer to compensating of that fundamental defective ness, the way standing on a roof gets on only trivially closer to grabbing the moon than standing in the dirt." This is an astonishing novel that grapples with the search life's meaning written in a style that is unremitting and unforgettable. Make MARTYR a must read.
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