"Incandescent" writes The New York Times of the award-winning poet Akbar's first novel. Its protagonist is Iranian-American immigrant Cyrus Shams, whose family is shattered after his mother's death (her plane was shot down by a US Navy warship). The troubled hero becomes obsessed with martyrs – Bobby Sands, Joan of Arc – and with martyrdom, in his search for a meaningful death "The novel itself is almost violently artful, full of sentences that stab, pierce, and slice with their beauty," writes The New Yorker. "This is a novel that comes at you from every conceivable direction," writes The Observer, "some playful, some whimsical, others grimly intense." In its review – and the book was subsequently selected as one of the paper's 10 novels of the year – The New York Times writes: "what Akbar pulls off in Martyr! is nothing short of miraculous." (RL)

First published January 23, 2024