Martyr! An Observer Book of the Year

‘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 StarsA BOOK OF THE YEAR IN: The New York Times Time Guardian 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. * Martyr! was an instant New York Times bestseller w/c 27/1/24