Faber announced on Wednesday, October 15, 2026, that it can no longer supply Sally Rooney's works in the UK in any format, saying current legislation means it cannot pass her UK earnings on to her without risking violation of the terror ban on Palestine Action.

The publisher stressed the decision was made in full agreement with Rooney, who said she is "wholly prepared to accept the consequences." Faber says it remains her proud publisher in other territories.

(AP via ABC News; Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

The new development since Faber's announcement is the retail chaos.

The Booksellers Association later confirmed, according to AP, that while the titles are no longer available to order, shops can keep selling existing stock — but by then some stores had already tried to stockpile and found distributors run dry.

"We were thinking, we'll just get a whole bunch before we stop being able to," Lucy Burke of London's Camden Town Bookshop told AP, calling the situation "absolutely ridiculous" and censorship of "one of our most prominent writers." (AP via ABC News)

Rooney is the author of four novels — "Conversations with Friends," "Normal People," "Beautiful World, Where Are You" and "Intermezzo" — that have sold millions of copies, with the first two adapted for television by the BBC, as AP notes.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency adds that Rooney had flagged in February, when she provided a supportive witness statement in the High Court challenge to the ban, that she was "almost certain" her work would be dropped in Britain if the proscription persisted — and it now has been.

(ABC News; Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

The withdrawal lands amid an unresolved legal battle. AP reports the High Court ruled in February that proscribing Palestine Action was disproportionate and unlawful, but the Court of Appeal overturned that in June, calling the ban "justified and proportionate."

Next month the group's lawyers will ask the UK Supreme Court to quash the ban. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency notes Rooney has already agreed with boycott activists on an approved Israeli publisher for "Intermezzo," echoing her 2021 refusal of Hebrew rights to an Israeli publisher.

(ABC News; Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

The Home Office says the proscription does not affect lawful protest for the Palestinian cause, which it calls "a fundamental democratic right," while civil liberties groups argue the ban unjustifiably restricts free speech, per AP.

Bookseller John Clegg of the London Review Bookshop told The Guardian he hoped Rooney's stand could help change the law: "Good on her for taking a stand, it seems a ridiculous law."