Michael
This is a wonderful book. The writing is beautiful, while at the same time being “simple” and easy to read. There are Farsi words scattered throughout Martyr!, but these didn’t bother me, though I must admit, I spent a lot of time with Google translate. It is about so much: life, death, love, family, and the place of art in the world. At times it became a little pretentious, but that was ok, the subject seemed to demand it.
This is written with several POVs, and it moves back and forth in time. I thought Akbar handles this well. The are dreams and surreal episodes. These are also handled well.
Many of the chapters start with a poem. Generally, I can’t appreciate poetry, so I ended up skimming these. Some chapters began with a report on the shooting down of an Iranian flight 655, a passenger jet shot down by mistake in 1988 by the USS Vincennes. All 290 passengers were killed. This was a real event. It plays a key role in the life and death of one of the characters.
The main character is Cyrus, a young recovering alcoholic and sometime poet. I shouldn’t say too much more about him since there are plot points I don’t want to reveal. Anyway, Cyrus is a wreck, and his ruminations and dialog are pretentious and over-the-top. He is concerned that his life “Mean” something. I can’t stand these people in real life, but this is a novel after all, and I found him kind of loveable.
There are many other characters in the novel. They are all well written and I really wanted to know more about them. There are Cyrus’ parents, Ali and Roya; Roya’s brother Arash; Orkideh, a New York City performance artist; and Zee, Cyrus’ perhaps lover and friend. Zee was the kindest and most loving person in the novel, and he was my favorite character.
The ending is somewhat ambiguous. This is okay, since I was able to project a very happy ending for Cyrus and Zee.
I don’t really have much more to say other than the fact that I loved Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!
This is a wonderful book. The writing is beautiful, while at the same time being “simple” and easy to read. There are Farsi words scattered throughout Martyr!, but these didn’t bother me, though I must admit, I spent a lot of time with Google translate. It is about so much: life, death, love, family, and the place of art in the world. At times it became a little pretentious, but that was ok, the subject seemed to demand it.
This is written with several POVs, and it moves back and forth in time. I thought Akbar handles this well. The are dreams and surreal episodes. These are also handled well.
Many of the chapters start with a poem. Generally, I can’t appreciate poetry, so I ended up skimming these. Some chapters began with a report on the shooting down of an Iranian flight 655, a passenger jet shot down by mistake in 1988 by the USS Vincennes. All 290 passengers were killed. This was a real event. It plays a key role in the life and death of one of the characters.
The main character is Cyrus, a young recovering alcoholic and sometime poet. I shouldn’t say too much more about him since there are plot points I don’t want to reveal. Anyway, Cyrus is a wreck, and his ruminations and dialog are pretentious and over-the-top. He is concerned that his life “Mean” something. I can’t stand these people in real life, but this is a novel after all, and I found him kind of loveable.
There are many other characters in the novel. They are all well written and I really wanted to know more about them. There are Cyrus’ parents, Ali and Roya; Roya’s brother Arash; Orkideh, a New York City performance artist; and Zee, Cyrus’ perhaps lover and friend. Zee was the kindest and most loving person in the novel, and he was my favorite character.
The ending is somewhat ambiguous. This is okay, since I was able to project a very happy ending for Cyrus and Zee.
I don’t really have much more to say other than the fact that I loved Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr!