‘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
A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN:
The New York Times
Time
Observer
USA Today
Vanity Fair
NPR
The Atlantic
Electric Lit
Vox
The New Yorker

'Smart, dazzling, different... This book is thrilling.'
Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake

'Playful, soulful, kaleidoscopic, honest and profoundly moving'
Elif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees

'What Akbar pulls off in Martyr! is nothing short of miraculous'
The New York Times

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.