The British pop star created a literary space in the independent bookstore Lello, founded over a hundred years ago, to create a “ sanctuary dedicated to missing books. The library presents around a hundred works.
Literature saved from the waters. At 30, British pop star Dua Lipa opened her own literary space in Porto, Portugal. Passionate about reading, the young woman just married to Callum Turner has already launched her book club in 2023 Service95. Today, she is working to bring together works subject to censorship. Named Manifesto Library, the space was housed in the famous century-old independent bookstore Lello.
Physical version of the club Service95the Manifesto Library presents a selection of 100 works that “challenges power, censorship, exclusion and dominant discourses”. This library appears as a response to « book bans »initiated by conservative or authoritarian governments. So The Scarlet Handmaid by Margaret Atwood, removed from American school curricula, will be accessible, as will the books of Salman Rushdie, who was the subject of a fatwa and a knife attack.
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“This library is a sanctuary dedicated to lost books, to authors whose courage exposes structures of power and control, and to readers who refuse to be told what works they are allowed to readreacted Dua Lipa in a press release. You are invited to come on site and decide for yourself what should be on these shelves. Because sometimes the most subversive act of all is simply reading a book and then talking about it. »
Asked by Rolling Stonethe manager of the Lello bookstore, Francisca Pedro Pinto, was enthusiastic about the idea of this partnership coming to fruition. “For 120 years, the Lello bookstore has been based on a simple conviction: the book is a technology of freedom. The Manifesto Library was born from this belief. What is at stake is not only the future of reading, but the capacity of a society to imagine, interpret and build its own future. »