Martyr!

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What to expect

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

Critics 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. It is also wholly original, and the writing is brilliant, full of chutzpah and heart
Elif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees
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
Kaveh Akbar renders the full spectrum of life, and death, with great beauty and care
Raven Leilani, author of Luster
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
Martyr! is an astounding debut . . . It feels like holding magic in your hands
Aimee Walsh, The Irish Times
It's so, so incredible
Kaia Gerber
I haven't stopped thinking about it. Sensational.
Daily Mail
A kaleidoscopic debut . . . a novel that comes at you from every conceivable direction
Guardian
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
Brilliant
Los Angeles Times
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
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
The Sydney Morning Herald
A literary gem . . . Martyr! invites you to read with a highlighter in hand
Observer
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.
Michael Cunningham, author of Day
Bloody marvellous . . . one of the best novels I’ve read in a while
Andrea Wulf

User Reviews

Book 4.0
Narration 5.0
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5.0
Such a beautifully written book, and very funny. I'm still thinking about a week later, trying to unravel that ending.
marieiram 01/05/2025

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