Título: Martyr!
Série: -
Autor: Kaveh Akbar
Data de Leitura: 18/04/2026 ⮞ 02/05/2026
Classificação: ⭐⭐⭐
Sinopse
A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.
Minha review no GoodReads
Em Martyr!, a grande obsessão é perceber como dar significado à morte.
É este ponto de partida que molda um romance centrado em crises de identidade, no luto e na dependência. Gostei muito do primeiro terço do livro. Cyrus é uma personagem complexa e inquieta que nos agarra de imediato. Só que, do meio para a frente, fui aos poucos perdendo o interesse. A escrita tem momentos de grande beleza, mas o romance perde força, deixando a sensação de um potencial que não se concretiza totalmente.
Progresso de leitura e citações:
April 20, 2026 –
12.0% "Her husband, her family, her friends—everyone she knew in Iran was cynical, believing that to hope was ignorant, even murderously naïve. But tomorrow would be better than today. For the first time in ages, she really believed that"
April 21, 2026 –
16.0% "(...) Uncle Arash had been tasked with the strangest job in the Persian army. At night, after the human wave attacks and the mustard gas left countless dozens or hundreds of Iranians dying on the battlefield, it was Arash’s job to quietly and secretly put on a long black cloak, get atop a horse, and ride around the battlefield of fallen men with a flashlight under his face. He was meant to look like an angel."
April 22, 2026 –
18.0% "We move from one decision to the next, only we’re not even aware they’re decisions. We treat our minds like crowns, these magnificent crowns on our magnificent autonomies. But our minds aren’t crowns. They’re clocks. It’s why we invest everything in our stories. Stories are the excrement of time. Someone said that.”
Adélia Prado, said Lisa.
Adélia Prado, right, Roya answered. How did you know that? Roya asked."
April 23, 2026 –
23.0% "All I know is I’m fascinated. Like in Iran, there are these schools for the children of men killed in the war, who they call ‘martyrs.’ (…) I’ve heard of children of martyrs trying to hide it, like they’re ashamed of all the privilege. Like trust fund kids, except instead of trust funds they have dead parents. It’s nuts.”"
April 26, 2026 –
32.0% "The chicken farm where I worked in Fort Wayne wasn’t a normal farm. We didn’t raise chickens for you to eat. We raised the grandparents of the chickens you eat. A breeder farm. And really, it was more laboratory than farm. The goal: to create, through selective breeding, a chicken that would go from egg to harvest in as little time as possible, on as little feed as possible."
April 27, 2026 –
44.0% "My marriage with Ali was never one of those, but just being perceived, all the time being perceived, was itself exhausting. Ali’s vacations were vacations for me too."
April 28, 2026 –
53.0% "Cyrus read on a website once that there was a word for this: sonder. “The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” Incredible, how naming something took nothing away from its stagger. Language could be totally impotent like that."
April 28, 2026 –
62.0% "Everyone in America seemed to be afraid and hurting and angry, starving for a fight they could win. And more than that even, they seemed certain their natural state was to be happy, contented, and rich. The genesis of everyone’s pain had to be external, such was their certainty."
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