Jan 31

Jan 31 Martyr!

About the book

Author: Kaveh Akbar
Publisher: Knopf

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

Buy and support indie bookstores (+ I earn a small commission):
Bookshop.org (print) | Libro.fm (audio)

My Review

Whew, I loved this one!! I’m a sucker for prose written by poets, and Kaveh Akbar is one of our best living poets. So this debut novel has everyone’s attention. It’s about a man names Cyrus, an Iranian-American poet whose mother’s plane was mistakenly shot out of the sky over Tehran by the US government. He’s depressed and struggling with sobriety and doing a lot of questioning about the meaning of death and the value of life. So the book is full of these themes (and so much more). The whole time, I just wanted to hug Cyrus (and shake him!!).

I know some people preferred the first half to the second, but while I did love the meditation of the beginning, I found myself even more drawn into the plottier second half (and I loved the ending — wow, I wish I had a book club to talk about that one with!). The chorus of voices also really worked for me; it includes people who are dead, imagined/dream conversations with dead people and celebrities, flashbacks, and more.

I don’t think it will be exactly everyone’s cup of tea, but it was definitely mine, and I think everyone will still find something to love in here regardless.