Some 300 authors have signed a letter in support of Sally Rooney calling for the UK government to lift the proscription of Palestine Action (PA) that produced this situation, and that has seen thousands of peaceful protesters arrested.
Rooney has said that she will use her royalties to support PA, which means she is breaking existing UK law.
The letter reads: ‘As authors, illustrators, poets, and editors, we stand with Sally Rooney and Faber Books, and condemn a government whose actions, and inactions, have led to her books being pulled from sale in the UK.
‘Writers already face book bans worldwide and at home. It is unconscionable that a government can now effectively ban a single author for protesting that government’s own conflation of protest with terrorism. What future governments might do with this power should frighten us all.
‘We call on the Labour government to lift the proscription of Palestine Action that produced this situation, and that has seen thousands of peaceful protesters arrested.
‘A country that bans its writers for speaking out is not a free country. If you ban Sally Rooney, you ban all of us.’
In fact, Rooney’s books have not been pulled from the shelves in the UK. The issue is about payment of royalties by Faber to Rooney. Faber says: “To sell a writer’s work and not be able to pass on earnings is an unconscionable situation for a publisher. As such, and in full agreement with Sally, we have taken the decision Wiwany format. We remain the proud publisher of her remarkable body of work, which we will continue to sell in other territories.”
Some questions remain. Will Faber ‘store’ Rooney’s unpaid royalties in case there is a change in the law? The proscription of Palestine Action is due to be reviewed by the Supreme Court on 4th November. Will PLR – Public Lending Right – be similarly affected? This is the amount of money authors receive each time their books are borrowed from a UK library. Will UK booksellers be able to source stock from European wholesalers?