
Synopsis
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT PRIZE
A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE OBSERVER, THE NEW YORK TIMES, AND THE NEW YORKER
A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
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.
'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
* Martyr! was an instant New York Times bestseller w/c 27/1/24
Details
Reviews
I will carry this story, and the people in it, with me for the rest of my life.
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 reinvented
Playful, soulful, kaleidoscopic, honest and profoundly moving
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.