Kaveh Akbar, _Martyr!_

WHEN POETS WRITE novels, I worry about the potential loss to poetry, but the novels so often turn out to be excellent that I ought to quit carping and be grateful. Martyr! is another occasion for such gratitude.

Cyrus Shams, the central character in the novel, is the American-raised son of Iraqi parents, both of whom have died before the main action of the novel begins. His mother has died in a particularly terrible fashion, as a passenger in an airliner mistakenly shot down by the American military. I don’t know whether anything of the sort happened to Akbar’s parents—probably not—but Cyrus does share with his author not only his ethnicity but also an Indiana alma mater, a history of substance addiction, and an ambition to write.

Cyrus is drawn to big questions, e.g., is there a God? On the novel’s first page, he asks God for a sign, any sign, maybe just make the lights flicker…and then the lights do flicker. A sign? Crazy coincidence? Akbar had me hooked right there.

Cyrus also wonders what makes for a meaningful death, which has led to his drafting his poetry collection, Book of Martyrs, excerpts from which appear in the novel. This project in turn has led him to discover Orkideh, a terminally-ill conceptual artist whose last project involves having conversations with strangers about dying. To meet Orkideh and participate in the project, Cyrus and his friend and lover Zee make their way to New York City.

For me, the main pull of the novel was its writing, consistently witty, graceful, aware, smart, able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, but it has a deepening story as well in the rapid evolution of Cyrus’s relationship with Orkideh and the stress thus created in his relationship with Zee. A major revelation looms, which of course I will not reveal here, and a major epiphany, in which Akbar pulls out all the stops in his prose style, with stunning effectiveness.

In his acknowledgements, Akbar thanks Tommy Orange, “bandmate, maestro.” Are Akbar and Tommy Orange in a band? Time for a Spotify search. But what is the band’s name?