A review by littlerthings
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

emotional informative inspiring reflective

5.0

"Eight of the ten commandments are about what thou shalt not. But you can live a whole life not doing any of that stuff and still avoid doing any good. That’s the whole crisis. The rot at the root of everything."

"My life was a painting I'd been staring at upside down up until that moment."

"If we meet each other in hell, it's not hell."

Oof. I have so much to say about this book. As a queer Iranian person, books by other queer Iranian people are very special to me and I'm so glad this one exists.
Really gorgeous prose. Genre-defying storytelling. Somehow I wasn't as captivated in the first half but the second half of the book was so powerful. New favourite author.

Some sentences were filled with so much meaning that I had to go back like three times and listen to them again to really savour their depth. 
There were so many creative, unique elements woven together. My favourite were the dream sequences. And those little stories and anecdotes about music, art and myths?? Stunning. I learned so much.

Also, absolutely incredible audiobook  narration, like wow. 
Loved the typically iranian humour, and the iranian accent was on point.

All my life I had been searching for the word "sonder" and thanks to this book I found it now :') 

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