? Martyr doesn’t invite you in — it ambushes you. In his debut novel, Iranian-American poet Kaveh Akbar turns inward, crafting a protagonist who is all wound and wonder. Cyrus Shams is a recovering alcoholic, a reluctant poet, and a man gripped by the pull of martyrdom — not the political kind, but the spiritual, the existential, the deeply personal.

Cyrus moves through the world with the weight of inherited trauma. His mother died in the 1988 downing of Iran Air Flight 655, a tragedy that hangs like fog over the rest of his life. His father fades in a different way — through reminiscence, illness, and silence. What’s left is a man suspended between two countries, two selves, and the impossible desire to find something pure in a world that rarely offers clarity.

The novel drifts through moments rather than racing toward resolution: Akbar builds a narrative that feels intentionally unmoored — Cyrus’s journey takes him from a ghosted Midwest to a busy New York City, where he encounters a series of characters and images that blur the line between the real and the imagined — a talking bird, a dying artist staging her final days, visions that come and go like half-remembered dreams.

Martyr is a good read — it mirrors the chaos of man searching for something to believe in — God, art, justice… The novel isn’t interested in closure or redemption. Its strength lies in its refusal to resolve what was never whole to begin with.

WHERE TO FIND IT- Martyr is available at Diwan.

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