Book No. 35 of 2025
Martyr! is one of those books where Akbar’s gift for prose—sharp, funny, devastating, relatable, insightful—is so good that you feel like you’d follow him and his narrator anywhere. (And of course his poetry, written in the story by his protagonist, is also so good—I always say that poets write the best prose.) If I were to summarize the vibe and plot of the book, it wouldn’t necessarily sound like the greatest read, but I enjoyed Martyr! so much, which sounds a little weird considering how preoccupied with death the book is!
Akbar weaves together the themes of death, empire, addiction, art, and identity together so deftly and so eloquently. I often have a hard time with “hot mess” protagonists, but there’s something aching and beautiful about Cyrus’ struggles and mishaps, and I relate a little too hard to his tendency to horrify other people with his detached humor about terrible things.
Without spoiling anything, I thought a certain repeated setup in the story was absolutely brilliant when it turns out to be used to absolutely devastating effect in the end.
Also, I don’t know where else to put this: I associate the name “Cyrus” with the alpaca from Animal Crossing, so for a lot of the story, despite my concerted efforts to picture Cyrus as a young Iranian-American poet, I just kept seeing this:
