Martyr!: A Novel (National Book Award Finalist)

《Martyr!》是一部關於尋找自我與家族真相的小說，主角賽勒斯是伊朗移民的孤兒，剛戒酒，正努力面對過去的創傷與失落。他的母親在波斯灣上空的空難中喪生，父親則在美國從事沉重的工廠工作。賽勒斯透過藝術、信仰與過去的記憶，踏上探索身世的旅程，最終來到布魯克林博物館，遇見一位即將離世的畫家。本書語言獨特，風格鮮明，結合詩意、幽默與生命課題，是一部關於歸屬、創傷與尋找意義的動人小說。

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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.

“Kaveh Akbar is one of my favorite writers. Ever.” —Tommy Orange, Pulitzer Prize–nominated author of There There

“The best novel you'll ever read about the joy of language, addiction, displacement, martyrdom, belonging, homesickness.” —Lauren Groff, best-selling author of Matrix and Fates and Furies

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.

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.