<p><b>Cyrus Shams is lost.</b><br><br>The orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, Cyrus never knew his mother. Killed when her plane was shot down over the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident, Cyrus has spent his life grappling with the meaningless nature of his mother’s death. Now he is set to learn the truth of her life.<br><br>When Cyrus’s obsession with the lives of the martyrs – Bobby Sands, Joan of Arc – leads him to a chance encounter with a dying artist, he finds himself drawn towards the mysteries of his past: an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of Death; and toward his mother, who may not have been who or what she seemed.<br><br>As Cyrus searches for meaning in the scattered clues of his life, a final revelation transforms everything he thought he knew.<br><br>Electrifying, funny, wholly original, and profound, <i>Martyr! </i>heralds the arrival of a blazing and essential new voice in contemporary fiction.</p>