International pop superstar Dua Lipa has unveiled a bold new sanctuary for forbidden literature with the launch of the Manifesto Library. Established as a permanent physical space, this unique library is dedicated to showcasing 100 heavily banned, censored, and publicly challenged books from around the globe. The collection is housed within a brand-new cultural auditorium inside the historic, 120-year-old Livraria Lello bookstore in Porto, Portugal—a landmark structurally designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Álvaro Siza.
Developed through Lipa’s Service95 Book Club in an official partnership with the historic bookshop, the project made its public debut during the inaugural BABELL – City of Books literary festival. Lipa framed the permanent installation as a fierce tribute to intellectual freedom and free expression, calling the space a "shrine to books that have disappeared" during her opening remarks. She warmly dedicated the project to global readers who firmly refuse to be dictated to regarding what literature they are permitted to consume.
The highly curated collection is organized across four distinct, powerful themes: Power, Control, Voice, and Memory. The "Control" section examines institutional surveillance and propaganda through dystopian touchstones like Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, George Orwell's Animal Farm, and Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Meanwhile, the "Voice" and "Memory" sections amplify marginalized perspectives and combat historical erasure, offering a home to titles such as Alice Oseman's Heartstopper, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Han Kang's The Vegetarian, Yoko Ogawa's The Memory Police, Min Jin Lee's Pachinko, and Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.
A pointed political and legal section critiques state authority head-on, featuring works like Alexei Navalny's memoir Patriot, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, and Reginald Dwayne Betts's poetry collection Felon. The grand opening drew high-profile support from legendary literary figures who understand the weight of censorship firsthand, including Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk and Salman Rushdie—author of the heavily targeted The Satanic Verses—who both attended the launch events to underscore the library's crucial stand against modern systemic censorship.