Dua Lipa opens library for banned and censored books in Portugal

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• Hacker News
• Lists of banned books are often quite disappointing, and I think they fall into a few categories:

  - Books that are simply bad books and in addition to being bad take an aggressive, political bent. (eg: the handmaid's tale)

  - Books that seem relatively anodyne, and it's not clear why they were banned. (eg: the perks of being a wallflower)

  - Books that governments might have feared in the old days, but are now much less threatening than other more readily-available material. (eg: 1984)

  I still think, even in these crazy, censorious times, that people who love banned books list are (intentionally or not) hearkening back to an older time when a centralized body could actually prevent access to information. Instead, modern book-banning feels much more symbolic. ie, "we do not approve of this book!" rather than effective. Anyone can buy the book on Amazon, or pirate it for free, or find countless video reviews which contain its ideas. And importantly, find many, many more extreme, subvesrive, rebellious, etc. ideas for free online.

  Of course I do not support the banning of the books, but I think sometimes once a book is banned this act gives the book power -- in more senses than one. Less discussed is that the fans of the book often believe it to be better than it actually is, merely for being banned.

  by everdrive
• “The Handmaid’s Tale is a bad book” is a wild take to start with.

  “I still think, even in these crazy, censorious times, that people who love banned books list are (intentionally or not) hearkening back to an older time when a centralized body could actually prevent access to information.”

  You don’t think a school library can prevent access to information? Poor people exist.

  by jnovek
• > Books that are simply bad books and in addition to being bad take an aggressive, political bent. (eg: the handmaid's tale)

  Weird example. The Handmaid's Tale is quite good.

  Edit: wow, downvotes for stating a book is quite good. HN at its worst.

  Edit 2: in fact it's so bizarre, also seeing other commenters here downvoted for saying Handmaid is a good book, that I struggled to see the reason for the ire. I'm not from the US, mind you, so it took me a while to add 2 and 2 and remember Atwood and Handmaid are in the current political climate of the US an anti-Trump stance. So that has to be the reason. Saying Handmaid is a good book implies you're anti-Trump and therefore invites downvotes (but also upvotes from the other camp, I'd guess). Wow.

  by the_af
• > Books that are simply bad books and in addition to being bad take an aggressive, political bent. (eg: the handmaid's tale)

  Handmaid's Tale is actually a pretty decently written book for a dystopia. You just need to like dystopias.

  by nottorp
• The banned book of the TV hit series The Handmaid's Tale. Watch it tonight on Prime Video!
  by guilhas
• > ... prevent access to information. ... or find countless video reviews which contain its ideas

  Popping in to point out that novels are not "information" in the sense of being lists of facts or ideas. The medium is part of the message. That's why novels can be banned but a list of the facts/ideas are often not.

  Reading an AI summary of a novel is not even roughly equivalent to reading the book. (Before AI, there were handwritten summaries like Cliff's Notes that served the same purpose of allowing a person to gain a superficial understanding of a book.)

  For example: one could list the key facts of _Roots_ (banned in school libraries in the author's home state of Tennessee in 2026) and not convey the points of the book, which is embodied in the totality of the work. Incidentally, _Roots_ was banned for integral parts of the message of the book.

  by runako
• I am normally with the cynics but I have trouble believing that none of the commenters are unaware that some books are banned in schools, prisons and military bases, in America. This is not just a problem limited to foreign theocracies.
  by josefritzishere
• They are banned in the US in the same way playboy magazine is, they are not allowed in certain places. Would you say that Playboy Magazine is a banned book becuase its not allowed in schools and prisons?
  by wonderwonder
• Yeah, I'm pretty sure I would get call for a quick chat with HR if I walked around the office with Mein Kampf under my arm as well.

  Schools, prisons, etc are institutions that can decide what is appropriate for their audience and how they want to spend their shelf space. A real banned book is a book that gets you in legal trouble if you're caught with it.

  by dudul
• Cool.
  by moralestapia
• Wow, Margaret Atwood how dangerous and subversive.
  by suddenlybananas
• Not sure if your sarcasm is directed at Dua Lipa for including Atwood, or at the states that actually removed it from their public schools (Texas, Florida, Missouri, among others), but it was actually banned in Portugal during the Salazar regime.

  Either way, I agree with your comment that there is nothing dangerous about Atwood unless you are a fan of authoritarian religious governments.

  by Guthwine
• Yeah, she's really underground. Not many people have heard of her.
  by gadders
• There are no books banned in EU... Some countries have laws that criminalise glorification of nazism or communism, but I never heard any book was "banned" as a result.

  Here in Poland we had "Mein Kampf" by certain Austrian painter in my primary school library for example.

  by Roark66
• That's not true at all, for example in Belgium, any book that discredits genocide, incites to racial hatred, or shows sex with minors is banned from sale and/or possession. Then there's also moral rights infringement, such as obscene parodies of Tintin, books explaining suicide methods, etc, etc.
  by fvdessen
• Wouldn't something like a book of child pornography be banned in the EU?
  by criddell
• Seeing it in the flesh is the reason why I don't believe too many people actually read the original (and not the abridged version).

  It's a brick! And poorly written at that. The man had no talent for the arts.

  by Tade0
• No Eu wide bans, but quite a few in some EU countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_govern...

  According to that list, in Germany unannotated editions of Mein Kampf are still banned.

  by graemep
• One of those marketing events in a cool instagramable spot in Oporto that already has huge queues of people just to photograph it and I'm sure it will only sell books in English catered to tourists and nomad tech bros that are already ruining the city's housing supply. Awesome.
  by world2vec
• > In some cases, the author has paid for their words with their life.”

  Are there examples of these?

  The few examples mentioned in the article are easy to buy, at least in the US. Is there a full manifest somewhere?

  by dudul
• Hundreds in Gaza alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_journalists_in_the_...
  by josefritzishere
• I guess Salman Rushdie nearly did.

  https://www.service95.com/manifesto-library-launch looking here, it seems the best case would be Navalny, although he wasn't really killed for his book per se, but rather his political opposition.

  by suddenlybananas
• Dear reader, "banned" in this case means government institutions (school libraries) did not promote the book to schoolchildren. It does not mean possession of the book got anyone arrested, or that the books are not extremely easily available in major corporate retailers (or even in non-school government-funded libraries). So for example, one is unlikely to find in this library the kind of stickers that got Sam Melia arrested [1], or anything the UK would consider "likely to stir up racial hate" [2], such as the music album “Phoenix Rising” by Embers of an Empire [3,4].

  Whether books by e.g. Jared Taylor are also "banned" in this manner in the UK is left wonderfully vague - the only way to find out is to be found possessing one, and then see if the government prosecutes you. You get chilling effects for free, and avoid the bad PR of a "banned books" list!

  [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-68448867

  [2] https://www.thelawpages.com/criminal-offence/Possessing-raci...

  [3] https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/R-v-Robe...

  [4] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3yl0dgq3no

  by like_any_other
• Are those just banned and censored in Portugal specifically or the EU as a whole?

  A quick check here in the States showed all of them available on Amazon for under $25 each.

  by caseysoftware
• No non of them are censored in the EU. They are all censored in the US, maybe with the exception of Salman Rushdie.

  US book banning is mainly schools and parent groups strong arming libraries and educators to forgo specific books.

  by tokai
• The "in Portugal" is, I presume, a statement on where the library is.

  Further, when people talk about banned books, they usually mean at some sub-country level, even down to a school board. Like if you look at -

  https://pen.org/banned-books-list-2025/

  - these books weren't banned from the United States, but they're controversial enough that individual school boards or library systems removed them.

  by llm_nerd
• > A quick check here in the States showed all of them available on Amazon for under $25 each.

  The term “banned books” has become a pop culture meme. In this context it doesn’t literally mean banned, it means the book wasn’t allowed somewhere. In extreme cases a government in a controlling country may have forbidden the book.

  However in a lot of cases the “banned books” were just not allowed in some school’s library for kids somewhere.

  That’s why all of the books aren’t actually banned in the US and are readily available, unless maybe you’re a 3rd grader looking for them at some school library that probably wasn’t going to order the book for kids anyway before it became “banned”

  by Aurornis
• A venture that gathers objects of subversion likely to draw the ire of authoritarian powers into a single building doesn’t strike me as something likely to peacefully exist for long.
  by beaker52
• ... I mean, it's in Portugal. Are you expecting Russia or a Florida school board or whatever to bomb it?
  by rsynnott
• Good on her using her platform for something.
  by happyPersonR