Martyr!

The instant New York Times bestseller: a young man uncovers the truth behind his mother’s death in this transcendental debut that takes the reader from New York to Tehran.

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

Playful, soulful, kaleidoscopic, honest and profoundly moving

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

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

I haven't stopped thinking about it. Sensational.

It's so, so incredible

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.

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

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.