The Current Sally Rooney and Faber Impasse

Opinion Piece

As a writer and editor, I find the decision by publishing giant, Faber to stop supplying Irish author, Sally Rooney’s, books in the United Kingdom deeply troubling. A mature literary culture should be capable of accommodating an author whose political convictions provoke disagreement. If writers can participate in public life only while their opinions remain comfortable, we are defending a freedom that disappears precisely when it becomes most necessary.

A critically honest response must begin by acknowledging what has happened. Faber has not simply rejected Rooney because it dislikes her politics. According to its statement, UK legislation prevents it from passing on earnings because of her declared intention to financially support Palestine Action, a proscribed organisation. The decision to stop supplying her work was taken with her agreement. This distinction matters: expressing an opinion and pledging financial support are different acts. Defending literary freedom requires us to confront that complexity.

Even so, the cultural consequences deserve scrutiny. A restriction concerning the intended use of royalties has reached into the circulation of novels. The immediate issue obviously concerns money; but the resulting loss concerns literature, readers and the space available for dissent. We need to pay attention because this is where my unease begins.

The phrase “cancel culture” can illuminate this situation, but it can also obscure it. We now use it to describe everything from criticism on social media to the withdrawal of professional opportunities but these are not equivalent things. A reader refusing to buy a book exercises a freedom of their own. A critic challenging an author’s views contributes to public debate. Neither automatically constitutes censorship. And censorship is something I have been interested in since the late 1980s when I wrote a very lengthy Master's degree thesis on that very topic ('Censorship and Social Discourse').

Here, however, legal restrictions have helped produce the withdrawal of an author’s work from a national publishing market. Whatever our position on Rooney’s politics, that outcome demands more than the familiar observation that actions have consequences. The serious question is whether those consequences are justified, proportionate and compatible with a modern pluralist, democratic literary culture.

And, of course, as a writer, I must also examine my own instinct to defend another writer. Professional solidarity can sharpen our awareness of injustice, but it can also make us selective. Would I defend the same freedom for an author whose politics I found objectionable? Would I insist on the distinction between their novels and their public commitments if those commitments offended me? If my answer changes according to the writer involved, my defence of freedom becomes more a defence of my own preferences.

Rooney’s literary achievement does not place her beyond criticism. Nor does being a novelist confer special immunity from laws governing financial support. The strongest defence of her freedom must recognise that governments have a responsibility to protect people from violence and that political conviction does not make every means of pursuing a cause acceptable. But that responsibility does not place government decisions beyond challenge.

The legal history of Palestine Action’s proscription demonstrates that its justification has been seriously contested: the High Court found against the decision, the Court of Appeal upheld it, and a Supreme Court hearing is scheduled for 4 and 5 November. The dispute includes the balance between proscription and freedom of expression and assembly. We should therefore resist treating a legal designation as the end of moral or political discussion. Citizens must remain able to question how state power is exercised, including when that power is exercised in the name of security.

Faber’s position is also more difficult than the language of cancellation suggests. It remains supportive of Rooney’s work and has said it cannot accept selling that work while being unable to pay her. Its decision exposes a troubling predicament for publishing: an institution can value an author, defend her books and still conclude that it cannot continue supplying them under the prevailing legal conditions.

For other writers, the possible chilling effect is clear. An established novelist has a readership and a platform from which to explain her position. An emerging writer may look at the same events and quietly decide that speaking is simply too expensive and a feared landscape that should not be explored. We cannot measure all the opinions that remain unpublished, the statements never made or the convictions softened before they reach an editor.

This is why the freedom to write involves more than permission to put words on a page. It also concerns the conditions under which a writer can publish, earn a living and participate in public debate. There is a comfortable cultural expectation that writers should possess a conscience, provided it remains safely contained within their books. We celebrate their ability to question power in fiction, then become uneasy when they carry that questioning into public life.

I do not believe a writer should have to surrender political agency as the price of literary circulation. Equally, I do not believe that defending a writer requires endorsing every position they take. We can scrutinise Rooney’s commitments, challenge her judgement and debate the organisations she supports while remaining troubled by the disappearance of her novels from a major market. That capacity to hold disagreement and freedom together is essential.

A healthy literary culture needs readers who can argue with writers, publishers who can sustain difficult work and laws whose effects remain open to examination. It needs room for conviction, error, criticism and reconsideration. Otherwise, we risk producing a culture rich in books about courage and increasingly inhospitable to writers prepared to exercise it.