Synopsis
Discover the life-affirming debut novel from acclaimed poet Kaveh Akbar: a love letter to the world and our search for meaning - in faith, art, ourselves and those we care for.
'Dazzling' Ann Patchett
‘Profoundly moving' Elif Shafak
‘Gorgeous’ Tommy Orange
‘Radiant’ Lauren Groff
‘Stunning’ John Green
‘Miraculous' The New York Times
‘Sensational’ Daily Mail
‘Kaleidoscopic’ The Guardian
Cyrus Shams has always been lost. He’s grown up tangled in the mysteries of his past – an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields, a haunting work of art by an exiled painter, and his mother, whose plane was shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was just a baby. Now, newly sober and maybe in love, he’s headed for an encounter that will transform everything he thought he knew. Can a final revelation change the truth of Cyrus's life?
Electrifying, funny, and all-consuming, Kaveh Akbar's Martyr! is a masterpiece.
A Book of the Year in The Observer, The New York Times, TIME, Vanity Fair, The Atlantic and The New Yorker, and shorlisted for the Waterstones Debut Prize for Fiction
Details
07 March 2024
9781035026067Reviews
I will carry this story, and the people in it, with me for the rest of my life.John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars
Smart, dazzling, different... a novel of depth and complexity, tragedy and humour . . . This book is thrilling. There's no other word for it. It's like watching the novel itself be reinventedAnn Patchett, author of Tom Lake
Playful, soulful, kaleidoscopic, honest and profoundly moving. It is also wholly original, and the writing is brilliant, full of chutzpah and heartElif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees
Kaveh Akbar is a radiant soul, a poet so agile and largehearted it comes as no surprise that his first leap into fiction is elegant, dizzying, playful. Lauren Groff, author of The Matrix
