Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel paints grief as an indelible, oddly-shaped stain. There forever, but funnier the longer you stare
The debut novel from poet Kaveh Akbar, Martyr! follows its central character, Cyrus Shams, on a mission to make his eventual death mean something. His mother was ‘turned to dust’ (a visceral description borrowed from the news broadcast of the event) in the real-life shooting down of a passenger plane over Iran in 1988. Its shadow cast over his life, he is rudderless but desperate to write about martyrs.
Iran is Cyrus’s birthplace, though his AA sponsor points out that by the amount it is referenced in his poems, you would never guess he grew up in the States and that his daily phone usage exceeds the cumulative time he has ever spent eating pomegranates. Through these honest truths that friends and acquaintances give Cyrus about his schtick, Akbar, also Iranian-American, demonstrates the self-awareness his protagonist lacks. Cyrus’s ethnicity, sexuality, preoccupations and addictions are written with the intimacy of lived experience but the wit and lightness of hindsight.
The book’s bricolage structure allows for jumps across borders, across time, that put its central character’s self-destructive habits in a compassionate frame. That a novel steeped with grief is so shockingly funny is testament to its radical authenticity. It is an open vein, bleeding all over the carpet. On some days, the stain is barely visible. Silly, even. You laugh when you notice it. On others, it’s all you can think about.