Dua Lipa opens library for banned and censored books in Portugal(euronews.com)
292 points by pax 22 hours ago | 235 comments
tl;dr: Dua Lipa has opened the Manifesto Library, a permanent collection of nearly 100 banned and censored books housed inside Porto's Livraria Lello bookshop as part of the new BABELL – City of Books festival. The collection—organized around themes of power, control, voice, and memory—includes works by Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, and Olga Tokarczuk. The project is an extension of Lipa's Service95 Book Club, and she'll also curate the Southbank Centre's 2026 London Literature Festival.
HN Discussion:
  • Dua Lipa is genuinely intellectual and her star power promoting reading is a societal good
  • ~The framing is misleading since the books aren't banned in Portugal, and grammar/translation of 'library' is questionable
  • The project is a stunt since Livraria Lello is a paid tourist trap, not a real library
  • Europe's inconsistent free speech record undermines the anti-censorship message
  • Defending the concept: featuring books banned elsewhere is a legitimate stand against censorship