Dua Lipa Just Revealed Her September Book Club Pick—and It’s Seriously Twisted

For her August book club selection, Dua Lipa chose novelist Madeline Cash's 2026 debut Lost Lambs. And now, she's continuing her streak for picking wacky, wild stories about dysfunctional families with Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. Instead of Cash's tale of an open marriage, wayward daughters and a sinister billionaire looming over a small town, Akbar's story follows a young, suicidal man reeling from the death of his mother and searching for meaning in life. That, ultimately, leads to his fascination with martyrdom.

"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 navy during the Iran-Iraq war in 1988—looms over his life," Lipa writes in the caption announcing the September pick. "Martyr! made me think about martyrdom in ways I’d never considered. Yes, Cyrus’s thoughts turn to hunger strikers and those prepared to give 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."