Martyr!

Cyrus Shams is lost.

Ever since his mother’s plane was senselessly shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was just a baby, Cyrus has been grappling with her death. Now, newly sober, he is set to learn the truth of her life.

When an encounter with a dying artist leads Cyrus towards the mysteries of his past - an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as an Angel of Death, a haunting work of art by an exiled painter – he finds himself once again caught up in the story of his mother, who may not have been who or what she seemed. As Cyrus searches for meaning in the scattered clues of his life, a final revelation transforms everything he thought he knew.

Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.

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

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 -- Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake

Playful, soulful, kaleidoscopic, honest and profoundly moving -- Elif Shafak, author of There Are Rivers in the Sky

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

In Cyrus, Akbar has created an indelible protagonist, haunted, searching, utterly magnetic. But it speaks to Akbar’s storytelling gifts that Martyr! is both a riveting character study and piercing family saga . . . what Akbar pulls off in Martyr! is nothing short of miraculous. ― The New York Times

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

A brilliant debut . . . simultaneously funny and piercing . . . Akbar writes beautifully ― LA Times

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

Akbar’s debut is full of love, fury, humour and wisdom. Protagonist Cyrus Shams… is coming straight for your heart ― People

I laughed out loud ― NPR

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

Reading Martyr! is a delight ― The Washington Post

Stuffed with ideas, gorgeous images, and a surprising amount of humor ... The serious fiction lover’s favorite kind of book, offering plenty to think about and discuss, all of it couched in brilliantly rendered prose that’s a pleasure to read. Let’s hope that Kaveh Akbar’s impressive debut is the first of many novels to come. ― The Boston Globe

Deep-feeling, beautifully bruised ... A darkly comic and heartrendingly earnest work ― The San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author

Kaveh Akbar has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes for his poetry, and his collection Pilgrim Bell was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Poetry. He is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, and his work has been featured in The New Yorker and The Paris Review, on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week and Front Row, on The New Yorker Radio Hour, and in The Kindergarten Teacher starring Maggie Gyllenhaal. His debut novel, Martyr!, was a New York Times bestseller and a most anticipated book in 2024 for TIME, NYLON, Oprah Daily and Marie Claire. Born in Tehran, he lives in Iowa.