The Hundred Books in the Basement

Porto. Livraria Lello. One floor below ground.

In the last week of June, a new set of shelves appeared there. One hundred books, divided into four sections. The labels were small. Under each title, a line noted the year, the school district, and the specific sentence that got it removed. Some were novels, some comics, some graphic novels. On the bottom shelf sat a 1988 first edition of The Satanic Verses. The corner of the cover was still creased.

Dua Lipa came. On opening day, she stood in front of the shelves and spoke for less than three minutes. Her shortest line was: “I invite you to come and see for yourselves.” Then she left. The staff who stayed behind fitted the glass cases and double‑checked the labels. Fifteen euros is the entry price to the main building of Livraria Lello. The basement costs nothing extra, but you still have to buy a ticket to get into the bookstore. Students and teachers could book free slots. The booking button was on the third menu level of the website.

After the news broke, the British and American press argued for about four days.

Fox News’s opinion piece got the most shares. It contained this line: “Your kid’s high school library has all of these books.” Then it asked another question: “Why aren’t there any anti‑vaccine books? Why nothing critical of gender ideology?” The writer hadn’t been to Porto, but his factual claim was easy to verify: none of the hundred books was a text cherished by the right as “suppressed by the left.”

The other side didn’t dispute that fact. The Guardian’s correspondent ran a different calculation: between 2021 and 2025, book challenges against school libraries in the US tripled. Every one of the hundred books corresponded to a real removal record: Maus, for instance, was pulled from an eighth‑grade curriculum in a Tennessee district in 2022, on grounds of “vulgar language and nudity.” Heartstopper had been requested for removal from young adult sections in more than one state, for “encouraging discussion of gender identity among minors.”

After that calculation, The Guardian’s piece made one flat statement: a celebrity willing to press her face against the word “banned books” gets more visibility than a librarian quietly holding the line in a corner.

Livraria Lello receives over a million visitors a year. That means two or three thousand people a day walk down the spiral staircase, pass the new glass case, and see those spine titles. Most of them would never have stopped in front of any bookshelf otherwise. Now they stop, even if only for a few seconds. The glass case was sized so that an adult had to bend down to read the lowest labels.

The commercial question didn’t disappear. Fifteen euros stayed fifteen euros. The free booking for students and teachers remained on the third menu level, and no one changed that a week after the opening. The bookstore said the project was non‑profit, and Lipa took no cut. But Service95 is itself a media brand; it had previously partnered with Penguin Random House for special editions. That partnership didn’t end because the library appeared.

The global right‑wing censorship wave did not become more real or less real because of this basement. State‑level anti‑CRT bills in the US, Russia’s restrictions on publications about “non‑traditional sexual relations,” the Hungarian right‑wing government’s limits on migration‑themed reading materials: these were already happening. They took place under different legal systems, but they shared one specific action: taking a book away from a place. Lipa’s team mentioned these in their press release. They translated the word “take away” into Portuguese, English, and Chinese, and stuck it at the entrance.

Someone asked a question: if something taken away is displayed again in a basement, does that count as giving it back?

A week after the opening, Porto’s local media went down there. They filmed a mother standing with her fourteen‑ or fifteen‑year‑old in front of Heartstopper. She later told an interviewer: “This book got our family talking about gender identity for the first time.” As she said it, her fingers didn’t touch the glass. The glass case was between them.

Another shot showed a middle‑aged man standing in front of Nineteen Eighty‑Four. He stood there for a long time. The guest book sat on a low table next to the shelves. He wrote seven words in it. When that page was later turned over, the indent from his pen could be felt on the back.

The indent wasn’t deep. But it hadn’t faded either.