Martyr!

Akbar's debut novel follows a young Iranian American poet chasing a meaningful death after getting sober, and what distinguishes it from the standard addiction-recovery arc is its refusal to let grief resolve into tidy meaning. The book moves between dream sequences, invented artworks, and a martyred mother's history with the confidence of someone who has spent a career thinking about how form carries feeling. Reviewers responded less to plot mechanics than to voice — a narrator whose wit and self-laceration never let the reader settle into either comedy or tragedy for long.