Service95 Book Club With Dua Lipa

Following the much-anticipated release of Min Jin Lee’s new novel, American Hagwon, we revisit Dua’s July 2023 Book Club conversation with the author about Pachinko, which follows four generations of a Korean family as they navigate identity, displacement and belonging in Japan. At the heart of Pachinko is a question about the people history leaves behind. Through the immigrant experience, life as an outsider, motherhood, faith and the place of women in a patriarchal society, Lee examines the forces that shape a life, and the resilience it takes to find a place in the world. Dua and Min discuss the years of research behind the book and the craft of writing characters who are complex, flawed and deeply human. The conversation also turns to how literature widens our understanding of the world, why stories that might otherwise go unheard deserve preserving, and what it means to see ourselves – and one another – reflected on the page. Join the club:  📩 Email us your thoughts – [email protected]  📲 Follow @service95bookclub on Instagram for more author interviews  📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter at service95.com to hear Dua’s next pick first  Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the Service95 Book Club this month, Dua is joined by Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro to discuss Klara And The Sun, her October Monthly Read. As Taika Waititi’s film adaptation arrives in cinemas this month, they explore Ishiguro’s speculative novel and its questions around technology, loneliness, hope and what makes us uniquely human. At the heart of the novel is Klara, an artificial friend chosen to be a companion to 14-year-old Josie, a “lifted” teenager whose health is deteriorating. In this conversation, the pair discuss why Ishiguro chose Klara as the narrator, the ethical questions raised by a society where children can be genetically edited, and the novel’s central question: can our memories, behaviours and qualities be captured through data and what makes us human? The pair also explore the importance of hope, connection, and art, as well as Ishiguro’s thoughts on seeing his novel brought to the big screen and what his much anticipated upcoming novel is all about. Join the club: 📩 Email us your thoughts – [email protected] 📲 Follow @service95bookclub on Instagram for more author interviews 📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter – and be the first to discover Dua’s next pick – at Service95.com And don’t forget to hit ‘subscribe’ wherever you get your podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo joins Dua for this special Service95 Book Club episode and answers questions from our Service95 community. In this episode, he reflects on the emotion he most wants readers to confront in The Son of Man, and why discomfort can open the door to deeper understanding. How does he portray brutality without crossing into excess? Where is the line between honesty and spectacle? The conversation also explores fate and free will. Are his characters trapped in cycles shaped by history, family and violence, or do they have the power to choose differently? How much of our lives is inherited – and how much is ours to reclaim? Jean-Baptiste also offers insight into his creative process: how he knows when a novel is finished, when to stop revising, and which writers have influenced his voice the most. Don’t miss it. Buy the book at Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Barnes & Noble Get in touch: 📩 Email us – [email protected] 📲 Follow @service95bookclub on Instagram for updates 📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter – introduced each month by Dua – at www.service95.com And don’t forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month, Dua sits down with acclaimed French novelist Jean-Baptiste Del Amo to discuss his haunting novel The Son Of Man – a tense, unsettling exploration of masculinity, patriarchy, and the cycles of violence passed from father to son. Set largely in an isolated mountain house in rural France, the novel follows a family upended by the sudden return of a father whose past trauma slowly reveals itself in devastating ways. “This is a dark book, even by my standards,” Dua says. “And yet, there’s also real beauty here.” During the interview, Jean-Baptiste tells Dua why he wanted The Son of Man “to talk about all the fathers and all the sons,” and how he used the narrative to confront how violence is learned, inherited, and repeated. He also speaks of his commitment to writing characters who are rarely centred in French literature, drawing on his background in social work to tell these kinds of stories. Together, Dua and Jean-Baptiste delve into how the novel’s claustrophobic structure draws you into the story, the author’s decision to focus on just three central characters, and the way small, visceral details signal the father’s unpredictable energy. As their conversation unfolds, they reflect on the emotional complexity of the novel’s title and its relevance in today’s world. Against the backdrop of ongoing global conversations about male violence, The Son Of Man asks urgent questions about trauma, responsibility, and whether it’s possible to break inherited chains of behaviour. Buy the book at Bookshop.org, Waterstones, and Barnes & Noble Get in touch: 📩 Email us – [email protected] 📲 Follow @service95bookclub on Instagram for updates 📚 Subscribe to the Service95 Book Club newsletter – introduced each month by Dua – at www.service95.com And don’t forget to hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices