NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • MOST awaited BOOK • A sober, orphaned son of an Iranian immigrant, guided by the voices of artists, poets and kings, ventures embarks on a remarkable search for the secrets of the family who takes him to the home of a dying patient. The ailing artist lived out his final days at the Brooklyn Museum. Compelling, funny and completely unique, Martyr! announces the emergence of a new essential voice in contemporary fiction.
“Kaveh Akbar is one of my favorite writers. Never.—Tommy Orange, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of There There
"The best novel you will ever read about the joys of language, dependence, displacement, martyrdom, belonging, homesick." »—Lauren Groff, bestselling author of The Matrix and Fates and Furies
Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with a legacy of violence and loss: his mother's plane was shot down over the Gulf Persia in a senseless accident; and his father's life in America was limited to a job killing chickens on a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunkard, drug addict and poet whose obsession with martyrs causes him to examine the mysteries of his past - towards an uncle who crossed the battlefields of Iran in dressed as an angel of death.
