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.

'An absolute jewel of a novel. I haven’t loved a book this much in years’ Tommy Orange, author of There, There

About the Author

Kaveh Akbar has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes for his poetry, and his collection Pilgrim Bell (2022) has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Poetry. He has been published in the New Yorker and the Paris Review, among others. Born in Tehran, he lives in Iowa.