{"id":653153,"date":"2026-10-21T22:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T22:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/653153\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T22:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T22:16:10","slug":"it-feels-quite-frightening-readers-rush-to-snap-up-sally-rooney-books-as-stocks-dwindle-amid-palestine-action-ban-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/653153\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It feels quite frightening\u2019: readers rush to snap up Sally Rooney books as stocks dwindle amid Palestine Action ban | Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Booksellers have reported selling out of copies of Sally Rooney\u2019s novels, following the news that her books would be withdrawn from sale<\/a> in the UK, given her support for the banned group Palestine Action. Sales shot up nearly 300% in a week, as a host of high profile writers<\/a> signed letters in support of the Irish author, including Zadie Smith, Annie Ernaux, Arundhati Roy, Ali Smith and Kamila Shamsie.<\/p>\n

Bookmarked, an independent bookshop in Bristol, had three Sally Rooney novels in stock when Faber announced last week<\/a> that it would stop supplying the author\u2019s books. Within hours, customers had bought all of them. Now the shop has none, and it cannot get any more. \u201cIn retrospect, I feel like we should have put them behind a glass casing, forever on display until the law is overturned,\u201d says the shop\u2019s general manager Evelyn.<\/p>\n

Faber\u2019s books \u201chave just been immediately taken down from the suppliers\u2019 website, which feels really eerie\u201d, she adds. \u201cWhat worries me most is the precedent that it sets \u2026 We\u2019re becoming increasingly used to seeing this type of stuff happen in other countries, but this is happening on our doorstep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rooney is arguably the best-known literary novelist of her generation. Normal People alone has sold more than a million copies in the UK, and each new book is treated as a publishing event, with launch-day queues and early openings. Now, her work is disappearing from British shelves.<\/p>\n

Last year, Rooney said that she would use proceeds<\/a> from her books and their BBC adaptations to support Palestine Action. The direct action group was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in July 2025<\/a>, and supporting it is now a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison (the high court ruled the proscription unlawful in February,<\/a> but the court of appeal overturned that decision <\/a>in June and the ban remains in force). Last week, Faber said UK legislation meant it could not pass on UK earnings to Rooney, and that it had decided, with her full agreement, to stop supplying her work. Copies already in shops can still be sold, they just cannot be replenished.<\/p>\n

Sally Rooney in 2020. Photograph: Erik Voake\/Getty Images for Hulu<\/p>\n

Readers have rushed to buy what was left. Nielsen BookScan told the Guardian that Rooney sold 4,531 copies last week, up 291% from the week before the announcement.<\/p>\n

Restocking is now the problem. When a customer came into The Best of Times, a new bookshop and cafe in Kent, asking for Rooney, owner Gavin Boyter went to re-order. On the website of Gardners, the UK\u2019s main book wholesaler, every one of her titles was marked as unavailable to order.<\/p>\n

\u201cFarcically, I can order Bucknell University Press\u2019s Sally Rooney: Perspectives and Approaches for a mere \u00a396,\u201d he said. \u201cI guess we\u2019ll be out of stock for the foreseeable future, which is a great shame.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI can still order four different versions of Mein Kampf, though,\u201d he added, which illustrates the \u201cabsurdity\u201d of the situation.<\/p>\n

In August 2025, weeks after Palestine Action was banned, Rooney wrote in the Irish Times that if supporting the group made her \u201ca \u2018supporter of terror\u2019 under UK law, so be it\u201d. She has since said she could no longer safely travel to the UK<\/a> without facing arrest, sending her editor to collect an award in London on her behalf.<\/p>\n

At Juno Books in Sheffield, Alim Kheraj said the situation felt unprecedented. \u201cWe\u2019ve had people coming in asking if they can buy the books specifically to support Rooney,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we\u2019re completely sold out. I can\u2019t think of another time where a publisher has had to pull a book because of comments [an author has] made about a specific organisation,\u201d he added. \u201cIt feels quite frightening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across the Irish Sea, a kind of book smuggling \u2013 entirely above board, as far as the booksellers involved understand it \u2013 has sprung up almost overnight.<\/p>\n

Kennys Bookshop in Galway, which ships worldwide, says its Rooney sales have risen tenfold since the announcement. Almost none of the new buyers are Irish: 95% of the increase, owner T\u00f3mas Kenny said, has come from Britain. \u201cIt\u2019s almost exclusively the UK\u201d.<\/p>\n

British booksellers are also trying to get stock in by the back door. Kenny, who works closely with UK shops through the Booksellers<\/a> Association, said he had been contacted by \u201clots of people\u201d looking to get hold of books. <\/p>\n

For him, the reversal is striking. He grew up in an Ireland where books were banned for blasphemy. \u201cBritain was where people escaped to, to read and watch what they wanted,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re in a scenario where it\u2019s the opposite\u201d.<\/p>\n

Northern Ireland, which has access to both the UK and Irish markets after Brexit, has become a conduit. Some booksellers there are openly continuing to stock Rooney by sourcing her books from the Republic, and then posting them across the water. Lesley Price, who runs Bridge Books in Co Down, says she has been \u201cinundated\u201d with website orders, most of them heading to Britain, and that sales were up \u201ctenfold, if not more\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe in book banning,\u201d she said. \u201cI know it\u2019s not a ban, but I guess it is a censorship of sorts, and that does not sit well with me.\u201d When she posted online that Bridge Books would continue to stock Rooney\u2019s books, she says the response has mostly been positive, with some exceptions. \u201cThere have also been quite a lot of people calling me a terrorist sympathiser and wishing harm on my business.\u201d<\/p>\n

Writers have also rallied behind Rooney. An open letter signed by hundreds<\/a> including Patrick Ness, Damian Barr and Juno Dawson called on the government to act. A second letter, published by the New Statesman<\/a> and signed by writers including Zadie Smith, Annie Ernaux, Naomi Klein and new Nobel literature laureate Anne Carson, declared: \u201cSally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist.\u201d Normal People stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal are also signatories, along with Gary Lineker.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am troubled at this Orwellian suppression of ideas, all writers should be,\u201d says Dawson. \u201cBoth throughout history and today, clampdowns on artistic freedom are a hallmark of rising fascism.\u201d Nikesh Shukla said he signed to draw attention to what he sees as the wrongness of the ban on Palestine Action itself, which he said was \u201cnow damaging the arts sector, literature and freedom of speech\u201d.<\/p>\n

Proscribing Palestine Action \u201chighlighted that the Terrorism Act is too broad in structure and application,\u201d says Jemimah Steinfeld, chief executive of Index on Censorship. \u201cThe arrests of thousands of peaceful protesters that followed made this point even stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is really a test case,\u201d she continued, adding that Faber\u2019s caution was \u201cfully understandable\u201d because \u201cwe\u2019re on new ground\u201d. Ireland\u2019s foreign affairs minister, Helen McEntee, has said she will raise the matter directly with the UK foreign secretary, Ed Miliband.<\/p>\n

The real test will come with her next release. Rooney\u2019s latest novel, Intermezzo, was published two years ago. \u201cWhat happens when she has a new book coming out, which I would say is not that far away?\u201d Kenny said. \u201cWill it be available in the UK? That, to me, will be a far bigger story.\u201d<\/p>\n

For independent shops, the stakes are high. \u201cIt\u2019s really some titles, like Sally Rooney, that will make or break your year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Booksellers have reported selling out of copies of Sally Rooney\u2019s novels, following the news that her books would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":653154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-653153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=653153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/653153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/653154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=653153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=653153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=653153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}