A most anticipated book of 2024 for Time, Nylon, Oprah, Marie Claire and CNN One of Sarah Jessica Parker's Books 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 Stars ** 'Smart, dazzling, different . . . This book is thrilling. It's like watching the novel itself be reinvented' - Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake

'This book vibrates with love of life, beauty and language. I’m in awe...' - Natalie Portman

Cyrus Shams is lost.

Ever since his mother’s plane was senselessly shot down over the Persian Gulf when he was just a baby, Cyrus has been grappling with her death. Now, newly sober, he is set to learn the truth of her life.

When an encounter with a dying artist leads Cyrus towards the mysteries of his past – an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as an Angel of Death, a haunting work of art by an exiled painter – he finds himself once again caught up in the story of his mother, who may not have been who or what she seemed. As Cyrus searches for meaning in the scattered clues of his life, a final revelation transforms everything he thought he knew.

Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, Martyr! heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.