Martyr!
Kaveh Akbar · 2024
An Iranian-American poet and recovering addict searches for a meaningful death. Akbar's debut novel is funny, profound, structurally inventive, and deeply moving about addiction, exile, and the hunger for purpose. One of the strongest debut novels of the decade.
The case against
Cyrus is a poet, and so is everyone else: every character speaks in the same polished aphorisms, including the dead ones in the dream chapters where Lisa Simpson chats with his mother. You will likely see the central revelation about the dying artist coming a hundred pages out. A poet's first novel, with the lineation removed and the self-regard intact.
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