BEST * -2024- BOOKS [3]

MARTYR : BY KAVESH AKBAR. Cyrus Shams, an Iranian American aspiring poet and recovering drug addict, wallows in a post-college malaise in a fictional Midwestern town.

He's working dead-end jobs and half-heartedly attending Alcoholics Anonymous, while grieving his parents' deaths and increasingly fantasizing about his own.

Cyrus is lost and sad, but this captivating first novel, by an author who is himself a poet, is anything but.

As Akbar nudges Cyrus closer to uncovering a secret in his family's past, he turns his protagonist's quest for meaning - involving a road trip to New York and a revelatory encounter in the Brooklyn Museum - into an indelible affirmation of life, rife with inventive beauty, vivid characters and surprising twists of plot.