Martyr!

Cyrus Shams is lost. A recovering alcholic and a lacklustre medical actor, he has been studying the lives of the martyrs - Qu Yuan, Joan of Arc, Bobby Sands - trying to make sense of the death of his mother, Roya, who was killed when the US Navy shot down Iran Air flight 655, a civilian plane with 290 passengers on board, on her first trip away from Cyrus, her infant son.

Haunted by his mother's death, and the fate of her brother Arash, whose own life was consumed by his time serving in Iraq, Cyrus finds he cannot connect to those who love him, or move beyond loss into hope.

But Cyrus's life is about to change. On a pilgrimage to New York he meets Orkideh, a terminally ill artist who has decided to live out her last days in the Brooklyn Museum. As the two speak of life and death, Cyrus's past - his lovers, his hopes, his dreams, and the lives of his parents - begins to alter the story of his present, until a final revalation transforms everything he thought he knew.

Weaving between voices and dreams, and the lives of civilizations, artists, poets, and kings, Martyr! is a transcendental debut of loss and belonging from a writer of infinite talents.

About the Author

Kaveh Akbar has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes for his poetry, and his collection Pilgrim Bell (2022) has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Poetry. He has been published in the New Yorker and the Paris Review, among others. Born in Tehran, he lives in Iowa.