Singer Dua Lipa has opened a library of banned and censored books in Portugal’s famous Livraria Lello bookshop in Porto as part of the new international book festival, BABELL: City of Books. The singer-songwriter is best known for her pop hits including Levitating, Dance the Night, and One Kiss, however, she is also an outspoken voice for equality, and an advocate for the benefits of reading.
In 2023, Dua Lipa launched the Service95 Book Club; a monthly reading recommendation accompanied by a podcast interview with the book’s author. The singer is also curating London Literature Festival, marking the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary.
Lipa’s latest project, The Manifesto Library, opened in June (27th) as part of BABELL: Cidade-Livro, Porto’s new literary festival celebrating the 120th anniversary of Livraria Lello. The library is filled with banned and censored titles and will be housed permanently inside the beautiful Livraria Lello bookshop.
Announcing the library, Dua Lipa said: “Reading the world brings us closer — but sadly, not everyone is in favour of that. Here you will find one hundred books that ask questions, or have been questioned. Some have been banned by school districts for themes of race or sexuality. Others, written for LGBTQIA+ readers, have been restricted from display. In some cases, the author has paid for their words with their life.”
Dua Lipa raising an LGBT flag in a presentation at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles in 2018. – credit: Justin Higuchi
A press release explains: “The collection is more than an archive of banned books, although many on its shelves have been prohibited from publication, stripped from school curricula or removed from library systems in an attempt to stop someone, somewhere from reading them.
“It’s a space that brings together titles that have been subject to public debate, some that take censorship itself as their subject and others that have provoked sustained, uncomfortable debate about race, gender, identity and political power. There are books that haven’t been directly challenged but instead do the challenging – whether of existing power structures or the suppression of individual and collective voices – amplifying voices and preserving memories that others have tried to erase.”
The collection includes 100 titles including: The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, The Trial by Franz Kafka, The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, My Pen Is The Wing Of A Bird: New Fiction By Afghan Women, Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, and The Unbearable Lightness Of Being by Milan Kundera.
Dua Lipa adds: This library is a shrine to books that have disappeared, to authors whose courage unmasks structures of power and control, and to readers who refuse to be told what book they are allowed to read. You are invited to visit and decide for yourself what belongs on these shelves. Because sometimes the most subversive thing you can do is read a book and then talk about it.”
