Last Shelf Copy from Sally Rooney in Edinburgh Bookshop

Last Shelf Copy from Sally Rooney in Edinburgh Bookshop, Bought and Auctioned for Five Times the Price by Terror Law Suspects – Proceeds Donated to Palestine Action Legal Challenge

02 NOVEMBER 2026

EDINBURGH: 31 October 2026; Scottish Palestine solidarity activists, currently charged under UK terror laws for allegedly displaying support for the banned ‘Palestine Action’ organisation, bought for immediate re-sale the last available shelf copy of the Sally Rooney bestseller, ‘Normal People’, from Waterstones on Edinburgh’s Princes Street.

The paperback copy was then auctioned outside the store, fetching £50 – five times its cover price. The book’s instant resale was to raise money for a legal fighting fund in the campaign to have ‘Palestine Action’ de-proscribed as a ‘terrorist organisation’. Later this week, the next stage of the long legal journey to overturn the ban by the group’s founder, Huda Ammori, will be heard in the UK’s Supreme Court in London.

The book’s author, Sally Rooney, whose titles, along with ‘Normal People’, include ‘Conversation with Friends’ and ‘Intermezzo’, has pledged support for the fund to deproscribe Palestine Action, using royalties from her book sales. The Irish author would not just face arrest in the UK for expressing her political views. In her own words:

“The fulfilment of contracts to publish my work in the UK could now constitute a serious criminal offence. After a process of consultation and deliberation, and with my full agreement, my publisher Faber has therefore determined that it can no longer supply my work within the UK.”

UK terror laws have led to de facto censorship. Unable to earn royalties from book sales and with the publisher unable to supply her books for fear of prosecution, her shelf stock in UK bookstores is depleting without replacement.

Film footage shared by SPSC shows activists standing next to the bookshelf inside the store where the last single copy of Rooney’s book was standing. Wearing T-shirts bearing the message. “Genocide in Palestine, Time to Take Action”, the group explains the de facto ban on Sally Rooney’s books, in an action which ended with rousing applause from the store’s customers.

The auction outside the store, held in front of a long banner reading ‘Yes, it is a Genocide!’, took bids from the public gathered in support.

Normally, royalty payments made from book publishers to established authors are somewhere between 5 and 8% for a paperback.

This means that as a result of the SPSC action generating £50 for the Fund, royalties typical for the sale of 77 copies of ‘Normal People’ will have been received!

The group holding the action, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC), intends not merely to beat what is effectively a ban on Rooney’s books, but to make it counterproductive.

To that end, the action seen on Waterstones’ Princes Street at the weekend will be repeated throughout Scotland.

In solidarity with Sally Rooney, the SPSC activists wore the t-shirts worn by 18 people in Scotland who have been arrested and charged, in some cases on multiple occasions. With their t-shirt message ‘Genocide in Palestine, Time to Take Action’, Scotland’s prosecutors in the Crown Office have refuted advice given by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in England and Wales, which is published in a document from Counter Terrorism Police UK. In Section 7 of “Palestine Action: Recent Tactics Guidance”, Counter Terrorism Police UK write:

“…the CPS have taken the view that this particular sign [“Genocide in Palestine, Time to take Action”] does NOT arouse reasonable suspicion that the displayer or supporter is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation”.