Book

Martyr! / Kaveh Akbar.

Summary:

A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a search that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum 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.

Record details

ISBN: 9780593537619
ISBN: 0593537610
Physical Description: 331 pages ; 25 cm
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2024.

Content descriptions

General Note:

"This is a Borzoi book."--Title page verso.

Awards Note:

National Book Award finalist, 2024

Audie Award Nominee for Literary Fiction & Classics (2025),

Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction (2025),

Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Fiction (2025),

Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fiction and for Debut Novel (2024),

Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize for Fiction (2024),

The Rooster -- The Morning News Tournament of Books Nominee for Shortlist (2025),

The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Nominee for Longlist (2024),

Dublin Literary Award Nominee (2025),

She Reads Best of Award Nominee for Book of the Year, Debut, and Literary Fiction (2024), =586 \\ Libby Award Nominee for Best Audiobook and Best Debut (2025)