# Martyr! - Hardcover

by **Kaveh Akbar** (Author)

**_NEW YORK TIMES_ BESTSELLER - A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK \- 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.

### Author Biography

KAVEH AKBAR's poems appear in _The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, The 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: 110 Poets on the Divine._ He lives in Iowa City.

**Number of Pages:** 352

**Dimensions:** 1.6 x 10 x 6.1 IN

**Publication Date:** January 23, 2024

## Details

- **Price:** 30.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 30.00 USD | In stock |

## Images

- Martyr! - Hardcover

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