Books Recommended by Dua Lipa

This month, we are doing something a little different… our September Monthly Read is the memoir Just Kids by Patti Smith. Patti is an absolute rock and roll icon and a personal hero of mine so I am beyond excited to dive into this book.

I could not put Pachinko by Min Jin Lee down… it’s quite long, but I promise you will race through it. It’s a sweeping saga set in Korea and Japan that follows the fortunes of a Korean family across four generations and eight decades.

Margaret Atwood: iconic, heroic… prophetic? My monthly read for November is The Handmaid’s Tale, a book that terrified me when I read it in high school, but which I could at least mentally file under ‘dystopian fiction’. Today, I’m not so sure.

My Monthly Read for March is Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay. It’s an essay collection that feels like a conversation with your smartest, funniest, wisest friend who’s always prepared to work things out alongside you. In some places, it’s genuinely hilarious. Others, deeply compassionate. And occasionally, totally devastating.

Tommy Orange starts with a brief but sharp history lesson in the prologue of There There, dispelling 400 years of slurs and stereotypes against Native people in 10 fiery pages – almost too painful to bear, but essential to start his story. If you are expecting beads and fry bread, you’ve come to the wrong book.

I first read A Thousand Splendid Suns just after the return of the Taliban in 2021 when Afghanistan dominated headlines around the world. If we need any reminder of why we should stand in solidarity with Afghan women now more than ever, this book is surely it.

Brightly Shining is the perfect festive read – full of wonder, hope and magic. But as you might have come to expect from my choices, there’s also a darker side to this story. Written by Norwegian author Ingvild Rishøi and beautifully translated by Caroline Waight, this is a contemporary reimagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s heartbreaking fable, The Little Match Girl.

My April Monthly Read is the extraordinary Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. Some of you may already know Michelle as the uber-cool singer and guitarist of the American cult indie band Japanese Breakfast.

This is a book that constantly keeps you guessing. Even down to the dialogue, which is like nothing I’ve ever read before. In Flesh, David pares speech back to the bone, and there are almost no physical descriptions of any of the characters – you’re left to picture them for yourself.

Free revealed things to me about a country I know and love well. The history is so recent, but the lived experience has changed so much in just one generation. What an era to live through, what an education to share.

It might take you a second to get into the voice of Crow but once you are, you are in for a treat. Grief Is The Thing With Feathers is definitely a book where you really just have to surrender to the story – take it from me, let yourself go and enjoy the wild ride.

I am delighted to announce our August Monthly Read is Half Of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I loved this book and I am beyond thrilled to be reading it with you! The story takes place in 1960s Nigeria, both before and during the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War.

I’ve long admired Kae Tempest for his body of work, which includes plays, fiction, essays, poetry, five studio albums and electrifying spoken word performances. Watching him move fluidly between forms is thrilling. Having Spent Life Seeking, his groundbreaking new novel, contains something of all of them.

I first read Jerusalem at 15, studying for my English GCSEs, and Johnny ‘Rooster’ Byron has stayed with me ever since. When I finally saw legendary actor Mark Rylance perform the role onstage in 2022, it was everything I had imagined. Now, I want you to have that experience.

Madeline writes at full volume – reading Lost Lambs can feel like scrolling an overstimulating social feed. But she keeps sight of the tenderness at the heart of the Flynn family and, hidden among the drama, is a lot of truth about connection and why it matters. It’s funny, fast and intoxicating. Believe the hype.

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.

My Monthly Read for January is the brilliant new memoir by DJ, producer and songwriter Mark Ronson – Night People: How To Be A DJ In 90s New York City. As a self-confessed night person, I can’t think of a better way to start the new year than a book that celebrates the energy and joy of the dance floor.

Like many people my age, I was partly raised by Malorie Blackman. She creates worlds you want to carry with you and each story encourages its young readers to ask the important questions in life. Noughts & Crosses is my absolute favourite of her books.

This beautiful book had me hooked right at the title. And while it is a novel, Ocean Vuong’s poetic language dances on every page.

My Monthly Read for June is Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe. Say Nothing is a masterclass in the art of the ‘non-fiction novel’. It has all the elements of great fiction – mesmerising characters, intrigue and plot twists. And it also happens to be true.

I didn’t ask you to leave. The opening line of Vincent Delecroix’s masterful short novel Small Boat gains increasing significance as he spins together threads of a story which is as shocking as it is familiar.

My monthly read for May is So Late In The Day by Irish writer Claire Keegan. Her stories are small gems: deceptively short, but they carry the heft of a great novel. This will take you less than an hour to read – but you'll want to start again the moment you finish.

Baby Inés doesn’t die as her parents feared – she is still born, despite her prognosis. However, this story doesn’t shy away from the complex realities of raising a child with profound disabilities – instead, it focuses on the transcendent power of love, as the parents get to know their daughter.

My May Monthly Read is Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski. It’s a beautiful coming-of-age love story set against the brutal political backdrop of Communist Poland in the 1980s.

My Monthly Read for January is the eerily beautiful The Guest by Emma Cline. Every page of this book raised so many questions for me! The story takes place over just one week, during which we learn almost nothing about the young protagonist Alex. We never leave a small affluent area of what we assume is Long Island.

Nobody puts it better than Herberta Hind, the book’s straight-talking (Black) FBI agent, when she says: ‘History is a motherfucker.’ And once you’ve read The Trees, you’ll understand why.

My November Monthly Read is Brit Bennett’s mesmerising novel, The Vanishing Half. This book brilliantly surfaces a multitude of questions about race, class, and gender, told through a family drama that spans three generations in 20th-century America. Twin sisters Desiree and Stella choose very different paths in life, with the implications of their decisions reverberating down the generations.

In This House of Grief, Helen takes us inside the real-life trial of Robert Farquharson and invites us to join her as she sits through days of detailed evidence, weeks of witness testimony and years of appeals. What she reveals along the way is not simply a courtroom drama but a sharp and forensic analysis of the human condition.

My March Monthly Read is Trust by Hernan Diaz. This book made my head spin! Set in New York City in the 1920s and ’30s, the story of a Manhattan financier and his high society wife is told through four ‘books’ – a novel, a manuscript, a memoir and a journal. But which version should you trust?

On one level, Widow Basquiat is a chaotic love story between the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and his lover and muse, Suzanne Malouk. Just 20 years old when they meet, we witness them hustling to make it in 1980s New York: a place where anything feels possible but that also hides a dark and sinister side of drugs, violence and racism.