The best book I’ve read so far this year is Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar.
When poets write novels I always get very excited because they enter into their contract with words in a different way to other writers, with a certain level of distrust of language’s abilities, with an understanding of the disappointing paradox in metaphors, and with a playful abandon for convention.
This book is a great example of all of those things. It tore me open so many times and put me back together again, too. It’s got everything — family, identity, death, nationality, history, death, art, politics, death, love, war, did I mention death, and dreams where the dead speak to cartoon characters




















