Dua Lipa's SERVICE95 Book Club Selects MARTYR! by Kaveh Akbar

Dua Lipa's Service95 Book Club has announced details for September's monthly read, Martyr! by New York Times bestselling author Kaveh Akbar. The Service95 Book Club will offer exclusive content from Dua and Kaveh throughout the month on service95.com, across socials, and via the Service95 Book Club With Dua Lipa podcast, where readers can watch or listen to Dua's interview with Kaveh starting today.

Speaking about Martyr!, Dua Lipa shares: 'The story follows Cyrus Shams, a young Iranian American who is suicidally sad but desperate not to waste his suicide. The long shadow of his mother's death on Iran Air flight 655 – tragically shot out of the sky by the US military during the Iran Iraq war in 1988 – looms over his life. Cyrus is a recovering addict learning to live with his sobriety. In his quest to find meaning and come to terms with the death of his mother, he develops an obsession with martyrdom. 'Martyr!' made me think about martyrdom in ways I'd never considered. Yes, Cyrus's thoughts turn to hunger strikers and those prepared to sacrifice their life for their country. But when he encounters Orkideh, a terminally ill artist living out her final days on display in the Brooklyn Museum, he begins to see the question of sacrifice through an entirely different lens. 'Martyr!' fizzes with chaotic energy and a thirst for life that is at odds with Cyrus's obsession with death. It's also very funny, with Cyrus playing 'good person drag' as a medical actor performing pain for cash, and Lisa Simpson making a cameo in long dream-sequence dialogues. This novel is profound, sincere, regularly comedic and quite unlike anything I've ever read before.' – Dua Lipa

For the latest episode of the Service95 Book Club Podcast, Dua sat down with Kaveh to dissect his one-of-a-kind novel, Martyr!, along with his wider body of work, the role art plays in life, and what he's working on next. To accompany the monthly read, Kaveh has also shared his recommended reading list and playlist.

Additional content this month includes a Service95 article that breaks down what happened on Iran Air's Flight 655 and how it links to the story in Martyr!. Service95 has also commissioned an essay from Osman Yousefzada titled 'Art Is Where What We Survive Survives,' in which the artist reflects on how art can be both an outlet for emotion, how history can live on through it, and how this applies to his own life and work. Finally, Service95 has shared a list of Books For When You're Kind Of Having An Existential Crisis.

The Service95 Book Club is the latest extension of Service95 – a global cultural platform and community that also consists of a weekly newsletter and Dua's At Your Service podcast. The Service95 Book Club is a place where Dua shares her favorite reads straight from her bookshelf, alongside recommendations, reviews and interviews from the Service95 team and beyond. Dua's conversations with authors – from Margaret Atwood to Olga Tokarczuk and Ocean Vuong – peel back the layers behind stories selected from around the world and have gone on to earn her the title of 'one of Britain's foremost literary tastemakers' from The Telegraph and 'the queen of trendsetting literary taste' from The Independent. The Service95 Book Club podcast was recognized among the Best Podcasts of the Week by The Guardian upon launch and landed atop Spotify's list of the Best Video Podcasts of 2025.

About Kaveh Akbar

Kaveh Akbar is the New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!, a National Book Award finalist and New York Times Ten Best Book of the Year, and the poetry collections Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf. His honors include Guggenheim and Poetry Foundation fellowships, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, Levis Reading Prize, multiple Pushcart Prizes, and recognition as one of TIME 100 Next. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Paris Review, and The Atlantic. Born in Tehran, he is the Roy J. Carver Professor of English at the University of Iowa and poetry editor of The Nation.

About Dua Lipa

3x GRAMMY and 7x BRIT Award-winning global pop powerhouse Dua Lipa continues to be one of pop music's leading forces with the release of her third album, Radical Optimism. The album went No. 1 in 12 countries, including the UK where it became the biggest album debut from a UK female artist in 2024 and garnered the highest week one sales from a UK female artist since 2021. In the US, the album debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Album Sales chart and No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, marking Dua's biggest sales week yet.

Most recently, Dua released Dua Lipa (Live From Mexico) – a live album and concert film recorded during the finale of her Radical Optimism Tour, which culminated in 92 shows across five continents, including back-to-back sold-out dates at Wembley Stadium, with over 1.75 million tickets sold across the global trek.

Following its release in 2020, Dua's certified platinum sophomore album Future Nostalgia became the longest running top 10 album by a female artist on the Billboard 200 in 2021. The GRAMMY Award-winning album spawned multiple worldwide hit singles, with 'Levitating' earning certified diamond status and the title of Billboard's No. 1 Hot 100 Song of 2021.

2022 saw Dua launch Service95, a global style, culture and society editorial platform that now comprises a weekly newsletter, the Service95 Book Club and the Dua Lipa: At Your Service podcast, which has been lauded by The Sunday Times and The Guardian, and was named one of the Best Podcasts of 2022 by Spotify. Dua added 'designer' to her resume in 2023 when she co-designed Versace's 'La Vacanza' collection alongside Donatella Versace.

Dua's eponymous 2017 debut album is certified platinum, spawned six platinum tracks, and made her the first female artist in BRIT Awards history to pick up five nominations in a single year. Dua has a total of 10 GRAMMY nominations, with three wins for Best Pop Vocal Album, Best New Artist and Best Dance Recording. She has also earned nominations at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards for her hit song 'Dance The Night' from 'Barbie.' Across platforms globally, she has amassed over 50 billion streams and holds the record for being the first female artist to have two albums with over 15 billion streams each on Spotify.

Photo Credit: Service95 Book Club

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