Back in 2021, bestselling Irish author Sally Rooney announced she wouldn’t allow her new book to be published in Hebrew because she supports an Israel boycott. At the time, she clarified:
“The Hebrew-language translation rights to my new novel are still available, and if I can find a way to sell these rights that is compliant with the BDS movement’s institutional boycott guidelines, I will be very pleased and proud to do so.”
Fast forward to 2026, and it looks like she found a way.
Intermezzo, the most recent book by Irish novelist Sally Rooney, will be published in Hebrew this month by the Israeli publisher
November Books, in collaboration with +972 Magazine and Local Call. The announcement comes more than four years after Rooney, citing the global boycott movement against Israel, turned down a translation offer by a different Israeli publisher for an earlier book.
Below, Rooney talks to the Irish Palestinian activist Samir Eskanda about her decision to work with November Books, which has been deemed to be in compliance with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
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The publisher November Books approached my agent with a proposal to translate one of my novels into Hebrew. Because the team at November is based in Israel, they were careful to explain how the publication would meet the requirements of the cultural boycott. For instance, November Books does not operate in illegal Israeli settlements, receives no state funding and explicitly recognises the international legal rights of the Palestinian people, including the right of return. I also kept in touch with PACBI along the way to try to ensure that I was upholding both the letter and the spirit of the institutional boycott.
For me, the act of translation is in itself a beautiful ideal. Though my refusal to work with complicit Israeli publishing houses made the contractual side of things more complex, I was, of course, never boycotting the Hebrew language or any language. I’m very pleased that Intermezzo will soon be available in Hebrew with November Books.
You won’t be surprised to learn that her fellow haters are condemning her for it.
After the magazine posted about the news on X, several prominent accounts on the site criticized the move. Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian writer and scientist, stated that November Books could not be independent if it “pay[s] taxes to the zionist colony”. Meanwhile, journalist Heidi N. Moore mocked the decision, saying, “Sally Rooney’s work was promised to them 3,000 years ago in the Bible,” in reference to Israel. Maria Aristodemou, a Senior Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck College, said that Rooney was “weak” and merely “pretending to support BDS”. Mohammed el-Kurd, a Palestinian author, claimed that Rooney had been “creating loopholes to bypass sanctions”.
Because at the end of the day, this isn’t a critique of Israeli state policy, and it never was. Heidi N. Moore’s bizarre invocation of biblical promises exposes the underlying truth: to these haters, the issue isn’t where the book is published or who funds it.
It’s the language it’s written in, and the people reading it.
