Booksellers have reported selling out of copies of Sally Rooney’s novels, following the news that her books would be withdrawn from sale in the UK, given her support for the banned group Palestine Action.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 signed letters in support of the Irish author, including Zadie Smith, Annie Ernaux, Arundhati Roy, Ali Smith and Kamila Shamsie.Bookmarked, an independent bookshop in Bristol, had three Sally Rooney novels in stock when Faber announced last week that it would stop supplying the author’s books.
Within hours, customers had bought all of them. Now the shop has none, and it cannot get any more. “In retrospect, I feel like we should have put them behind a glass casing, forever on display until the law is overturned,” says the shop’s general manager Evelyn.Faber’s books “have just been immediately taken down from the suppliers’ website, which feels really eerie”, she adds. “What worries me most is the precedent that it sets … We’re becoming increasingly used to seeing this type of stuff happen in other countries, but this is happening on our doorstep.”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.Last year, Rooney said that she would use proceeds from her books and their BBC adaptations to support Palestine Action.
The direct action group was proscribed as a terrorist organisation in July 2025, 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, but the court of appeal overturned that decision 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.Sally Rooney in 2020. Photograph: Erik Voake/Getty Images for HuluReaders 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.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’s main book wholesaler, every one of her titles was marked as unavailable to order.“Farcically, I can order Bucknell University Press’s Sally Rooney: Perspectives and Approaches for a mere £96,” he said. “I guess we’ll be out of stock for the foreseeable future, which is a great shame.”“I can still order four different versions of Mein Kampf, though,” he added, which illustrates the “absurdity” of the situation.In August 2025, weeks after Palestine Action was banned, Rooney wrote in the Irish Times that if supporting the group made her “a ‘supporter of terror’ under UK law, so be it”. She has since said she could no longer safely travel to the UK without facing arrest, sending her editor to collect an award in London on her behalf.At Juno Books in Sheffield, Alim Kheraj said the situation felt unprecedented. “We’ve had people coming in asking if they can buy the books specifically to support Rooney,” he said. “But we’re completely sold out.
I can’t think of another time where a publisher has had to pull a book because of comments [an author has] made about a specific organisation,” he added. “It feels quite frightening.”Across the Irish Sea, a kind of book smuggling – entirely above board, as far as the booksellers involved understand it – has sprung up almost overnight.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 Tómas Kenny said, has come from Britain. “It’s almost exclusively the UK”.British booksellers are also trying to get stock in by the back door.
Kenny, who works closely with UK shops through the Booksellers Association, said he had been contacted by “lots of people” looking to get hold of books. For him, the reversal is striking.
He grew up in an Ireland where books were banned for blasphemy. “Britain was where people escaped to, to read and watch what they wanted,” he said. “We’re in a scenario where it’s the opposite”.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 “inundated” with website orders, most of them heading to Britain, and that sales were up “tenfold, if not more”.“I don’t believe in book banning,” she said. “I know it’s not a ban, but I guess it is a censorship of sorts, and that does not sit well with me.” When she posted online that Bridge Books would continue to stock Rooney’s books, she says the response has mostly been positive, with some exceptions. “There have also been quite a lot of people calling me a terrorist sympathiser and wishing harm on my business.”Writers have also rallied behind Rooney. An open letter signed by hundreds including Patrick Ness, Damian Barr and Juno Dawson called on the government to act.
A second letter, published by the New Statesman and signed by writers including Zadie Smith, Annie Ernaux, Naomi Klein and new Nobel literature laureate Anne Carson, declared: “Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist.” Normal People stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal are also signatories, along with Gary Lineker.“I am troubled at this Orwellian suppression of ideas, all writers should be,” says Dawson. “Both throughout history and today, clampdowns on artistic freedom are a hallmark of rising fascism.” 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 “now damaging the arts sector, literature and freedom of speech”.Proscribing Palestine Action “highlighted that the Terrorism Act is too broad in structure and application,” says Jemimah Steinfeld, chief executive of Index on Censorship. “The arrests of thousands of peaceful protesters that followed made this point even stronger.”“This is really a test case,” she continued, adding that Faber’s caution was “fully understandable” because “we’re on new ground”. Ireland’s foreign affairs minister, Helen McEntee, has said she will raise the matter directly with the UK foreign secretary, Ed Miliband.The real test will come with her next release.
Rooney’s latest novel, Intermezzo, was published two years ago. “What happens when she has a new book coming out, which I would say is not that far away?” Kenny said. “Will it be available in the UK? That, to me, will be a far bigger story.”For independent shops, the stakes are high. “It’s really some titles, like Sally Rooney, that will make or break your year.”