Dua Lipa picked up a book, and it changed something in her.
The pop star and Service95 founder announced that Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel “Martyr!” is her September 2026 Service95 Book Club monthly read. This wasn’t a quick rec. Her announcement reads like someone passing along a book they haven’t quite finished processing yet.
“This novel is profound, sincere, regularly comedic and quite unlike anything I’ve ever read before,” Dua wrote on Instagram, signing off with a simple “Dua x.”
That’s a bold claim from someone who runs one of the more thoughtful celebrity book clubs around. Service95 launched in 2022 as Dua’s culture and lifestyle platform. The monthly reads have consistently leaned toward literature with real substance behind it. “Martyr!” fits that pattern. Then some.
The novel centers on Cyrus Shams, a young Iranian American described by Dua as “suicidally sad but desperate not to waste his suicide.” Heavy from page one. Cyrus is a recovering addict doing his best with sobriety. The ghost of his mother follows him everywhere. She died on Iran Air Flight 655, a civilian airliner shot down by the US Navy in 1988 during the Iran-Iraq War. Akbar doesn’t let that history fade quietly into the background. It’s the wound the whole novel lives inside.
Cyrus becomes consumed by the idea of martyrdom. He thinks about hunger strikers, about people who gave their lives for something larger than themselves. Then the novel throws him a curveball. He meets Orkideh, a terminally ill artist choosing to spend her final days on display inside the Brooklyn Museum. Living out a slow, public death in the name of art. The encounter reshapes everything Cyrus thought he understood about sacrifice.
“He begins to see the question of sacrifice through an entirely different lens,” Dua wrote.
For all its darkness, “Martyr!” isn’t a suffocating read. Dua was clear about that. Cyrus works as a medical actor, performing pain for money. Dua called it “good person drag.” Lisa Simpson shows up in his dream sequences. The book earns its absurdity.
“The book fizzes with chaotic energy and a thirst for life that is at odds with Cyrus’s obsession with death,” she wrote. “It’s also very funny.”
Kaveh Akbar is an Iranian American poet and novelist. “Martyr!” arrived in 2024 to wide critical praise. Dua’s endorsement puts it in front of a much larger audience. She wrote about it like it meant something personal. Service95 readers are in for something that sticks.
The full monthly read experience is available through the Service95 newsletter. A podcast discussion on “Martyr!” is also coming soon.
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