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A review by readwithmeemz
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
<i>”I didn’t know what any of it meant, but I knew it meant intensely.”</i>
Beautiful. Devastating. Funny. Brilliant. Masterful. Resonant.
Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is an early contender for the best book of the year, and definitely one of my favourites. It’s a meditative and melodic masterpiece that journeys you from birth, to life, to death, to death, to death, to death, and beyond. It’s about homecomings and hostile welcomes, and staring and screaming in the face of The Void ™️. This is a book about martyrdom, and like the mythos of a martyr, it will live on forever.
Poets-turned-novelists bring some kind of kinetic energy into every word, every line, every page, and Kaveh Akbar is no exception. I’ve read and loved much of his poetry in the past, and this novel is poetry too, but also so much more.
His words are strung together like pearls on a necklace, and I often found myself highlighting favourite words and lines and paragraphs, and saying whole passages out loud just so I could taste them.
<i>”How do we move through all this beauty without destroying it?”</i>
I connected so much with so much of this story. It was full of so much beauty and care and heartache and wretchedness, and I couldn’t get enough. Martyr! is a coming-of-age American dream novel in a way that only an alcoholic Irani Muslim obsessed with martyrdom can write (without getting arrested by the FBI, at least). He speaks on immigration and the thousands of deaths it brings. He speaks on imperialism and oppression and addiction and love. he speaks on death. And he does it all in a profoundly moving, tender, funny, and brilliant way.
I am saying so much about this book while also saying so little, I know, and it’s because I simultaneously want you to read it immediately without knowing much about it, and I also don’t want anyone else to read it, because I want it to be mine and mine alone.
<i>”That’s the secret, don’t you think, the amongness…”</i>
This book is art and magic and oxygen and heartbreak, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head or my heart.
Beautiful. Devastating. Funny. Brilliant. Masterful. Resonant.
Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is an early contender for the best book of the year, and definitely one of my favourites. It’s a meditative and melodic masterpiece that journeys you from birth, to life, to death, to death, to death, to death, and beyond. It’s about homecomings and hostile welcomes, and staring and screaming in the face of The Void ™️. This is a book about martyrdom, and like the mythos of a martyr, it will live on forever.
Poets-turned-novelists bring some kind of kinetic energy into every word, every line, every page, and Kaveh Akbar is no exception. I’ve read and loved much of his poetry in the past, and this novel is poetry too, but also so much more.
His words are strung together like pearls on a necklace, and I often found myself highlighting favourite words and lines and paragraphs, and saying whole passages out loud just so I could taste them.
<i>”How do we move through all this beauty without destroying it?”</i>
I connected so much with so much of this story. It was full of so much beauty and care and heartache and wretchedness, and I couldn’t get enough. Martyr! is a coming-of-age American dream novel in a way that only an alcoholic Irani Muslim obsessed with martyrdom can write (without getting arrested by the FBI, at least). He speaks on immigration and the thousands of deaths it brings. He speaks on imperialism and oppression and addiction and love. he speaks on death. And he does it all in a profoundly moving, tender, funny, and brilliant way.
I am saying so much about this book while also saying so little, I know, and it’s because I simultaneously want you to read it immediately without knowing much about it, and I also don’t want anyone else to read it, because I want it to be mine and mine alone.
<i>”That’s the secret, don’t you think, the amongness…”</i>
This book is art and magic and oxygen and heartbreak, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head or my heart.