Global pop icon Dua Lipa is expanding her influence far beyond music with a remarkable cultural initiative that has already captured the attention of readers, educators, authors, and free-speech advocates around the world. The Grammy-winning singer has partnered with Livraria Lello, the world’s most beautiful bookshop, to open The Manifesto Library – a library of banned, censored, and restricted books.
As many know, Dua Lipa has been outspoken about her literary passions. Her book club and podcast, Service95, has received acclaim from fans and literary critics alike for her intellectual conversations surrounding the written word. It then makes sense that she would engage in such an endeavour.
The new library focuses specifically on books that have been challenged or banned at different times in history due to political, cultural, religious, or social controversies, including The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and Felon by Reginald Dwayne Betts.
Rather than highlighting censorship itself, the project emphasizes the importance of allowing readers to make their own informed choices.
The Manifesto Library will open its doors on Saturday, 27 June, as part of Fundação Livraria Lello’s new international festival, BABELL – City of Books. Authors represented in the library, such as Salman Rushdie and Olga Tokarczuk, among others, will attend the launch this weekend.
The library will be found in Livraria Lello’s new cultural auditorium, which has been designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Álvaro Siza. It holds 100 books curated around four themes: Power, Control, Voice, and Memory.
With The Manifesto Library, Lipa expands the vision of her Service95 Book Club. She explained in a statement:
The Manifesto Library is a dream partnership between Livraria Lello and the Service95 Book Club. For over a century, Livraria Lello has been a source of inspiration for radicals, writers and readers, and every day, visitors from all over the world walk through its doors. It is the perfect home for the Manifesto Library.
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.
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.
In an era of political turmoil, book censorship across schools, libraries, and bookstores has increased tenfold. This initiative reminds readers that books have the power to inform, inspire, and connect people across cultures and generations.
The library is more than a collection of shelves, it is a celebration of curiosity, creativity, and the enduring freedom to read.
