Description

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

Publisher Review

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 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 An absolute jewel of a novel. A diamond. I haven't loved a book this much in years. Kaveh's writing is so thoroughly powerful and gorgeous you can feel it from where dreams come . . . This book does everything. -- Tommy Orange, author of There, There Kaveh Akbar renders the full spectrum of life, and death, with great beauty and care -- Raven Leilani, author of Luster Martyr! will stay in my soul for good-a fever dream, a reckoning, a heartbreak, a shattering and mending, a delight-its double-helix of dreams and conversation now part of my own DNA -- Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams Akbar is a black-belt storyteller, and MARTYR! is a page-turner I couldn't put down. Buy this book! -- Mary Karr, author of The Liars' Club I can't remember the last time a book made me feel like this. Martyr! is simply extraordinary. Kaveh Akbar has written a novel that will stay with me forever. -- Clint Smith, author of How the Word Is Passed