Reception
Martyr! was published by Knopf on January 23, 2024, and was critically acclaimed. [7] According to Book Marks , the book received a "rave" consensus, based on nineteen critic reviews: sixteen "rave", two "positive", and one "mixed". [8] In the May/June 2024 issue of Bookmarks , the book received four out of five stars. The magazine's critical summary reads: "Martyr!, a family saga and character study, is ambitious and somewhat chaotic, but Cyrus's internal journeying and Akbar's fearless treatment of serious issues such as religion, terminal illness, suicide, and addiction won over the critics". [9]
The New Yorker applauded it: "Akbar’s writing has the musculature of poetry that can’t rely on narrative propulsion and so propels itself." [10] The Boston Globe wrote that it is "Stuffed with ideas, gorgeous images, and a surprising amount of humor." [11]
Writing in The New York Times Book Review , Junot Díaz called it "incandescent" and its main character Cyrus Shams "an indelible protagonist, haunted, searching, utterly magnetic." [12]
At The New York Review of Books , Francine Prose noted: [13]
There’s something immensely appealing about a meticulously written novel whose characters (Cyrus isn’t the only one) are busily searching for meaning. It’s a pleasure to read a book in which an obsession with the metaphysical, the spiritual, and the ethical is neither a joke nor an occasion for a sermon. And it’s cheering to see a first-time (or anytime) novelist go for the heavy stuff—family, death, love, addiction, art, history, poetry, redemption, sex, friendship, US-Iranian relations, God—and manage to make it engrossing, imaginative, and funny.
In September 2024 Martyr! was longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction. [14]
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