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

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.

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.

Kaveh Akbar renders the full spectrum of life, and death, with great beauty and care

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.

Martyr! is an astounding debut . . . It feels like holding magic in your hands

It’s so, so incredible

I haven’t stopped thinking about it. Sensational.

A kaleidoscopic debut . . . a novel that comes at you from every conceivable direction

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

A brilliant debut… simultaneously funny and piercing… Akbar writes beautifully

Akbar is a black-belt storyteller, and MARTYR! is a page-turner I couldn’t put down. Buy this book!

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

I laughed out loud

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.

Brilliant

Reading Martyr! is a delight

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.

Deep-feeling, beautifully bruised . . . A darkly comic and heartrendingly earnest work

A unique delight. It is insightful and clever while also being unafraid to poke fun at itself . . . this is a singular work that introduces Akbar as an audacious and original contemporary storyteller

A literary gem . . . Martyr! invites you to read with a highlighter in hand

One of the many glories of MARTYR!, a first novel by the poet Kaveh Akbar, is its entirely original voice: half wised-up dude-speak, half soaring lyricism. This is a major novel that, like all major novels, doesn’t quite resemble anything else you’ve read.

Playful, soulful, kaleidoscopic, honest and profoundly moving. It is also wholly original, and the writing is brilliant, full of chutzpah and heart