Writing is not neutral: Sally Rooney and the responsibility of writers in the contemporary world

On 14 October 2026, Irish writer Sally Rooney found herself at the centre of a controversy. Her publisher, Faber & Faber, announced that it would no longer distribute her books in the United Kingdom in any format, after determining that British legislation prevented it from transferring her sales earnings to her, because Rooney intended to donate part of her royalties to Palestine Action, a direct-action group proscribed by the British government as a terrorist organisation in July 2025. Copies already held by British bookshops can still be sold until stocks run out. Rooney stated that she was prepared to accept the consequences of her choices without renouncing her convictions. Her position brings an old but far from outdated question back to the forefront: what responsibility does a writer have towards the world in which they live? And to what extent can, or should, they accept the public consequences of their ideas?

The relationship between artistic output and an artist’s political engagement has been widely debated in recent times. Many artists have found themselves at the centre of such controversies, particularly musicians, with Ed Sheeran being one of the most prominent examples. His case is particularly significant because it illustrates how difficult it is to escape the political implications of one’s choices, even when one claims to want to do so. Many believe that art and politics should be kept strictly separate, arguing that musicians are not necessarily activists. This perspective treats works such as books and songs as though they existed independently of the events unfolding around them. Yet the issue is far from straightforward.

In September 2026, the British singer became embroiled in a controversy following the removal of rapper Macklemore from his North American tour. The decision, formally attributed to organisers and promoters, came after Macklemore had publicly expressed his support for Palestine during a concert. Sheeran distanced himself from the affair and became the subject of intense controversy. The case exposed a contradiction: choosing not to engage in politics is itself a political choice, particularly when silence or neutrality intersects with decisions that restrict other artists’ ability to express themselves. Following the backlash, Sheeran addressed the issue publicly, stating during a concert in Philadelphia that the situation in Gaza was “catastrophic and unjustifiable”, while reiterating his wish for his shows to remain spaces of unity and humanity.

We are not here to discuss Sheeran, particularly because his story and Rooney’s differ in both nature and consequences. Nevertheless, both raise the question of artistic responsibility. It is not enough to ask whether artists have the right to express their views; we must also consider what happens when those views interfere with the economic structures that make their work possible. Separating a work from its author can be a legitimate critical approach. Attempting to separate art from reality, however, is a far more problematic undertaking. A novel is not reducible to its author’s political convictions, just as a song cannot be reduced to a musician’s biography. Yet neither exists outside the world in which it is conceived, published, distributed and heard.

This perspective takes on particular significance when we consider Sally Rooney’s literary work. In her novels, the private sphere is never entirely separate from the collective one: her characters’ romantic relationships, friendships, ambitions and vulnerabilities unfold within social structures that shape their possibilities, often in invisible ways.

In Conversations with Friends, economic circumstances and social background influence the way characters navigate their relationships. Although the narrative revolves around their most intimate social interactions, it also reveals dynamics of control and power that become increasingly significant within broader social relationships. In Normal People, class inequalities are even more apparent, and the idea that there is no truly private universe, but rather one increasingly shaped by external forces and therefore inseparable from the collective, becomes even more pronounced. The protagonists are influenced by their community’s expectations and opinions, while silence itself becomes destructive: the inability to express oneself can become a source of suffering and contribute to the perpetuation of unequal relationships.

With Beautiful World, Where Are You, Rooney broadens her perspective to encompass the contradictions of contemporary life, marked by inequality, environmental crisis and the difficulty of reconciling an awareness of injustice with the possibility of taking concrete action against it. Through her own work, Rooney has therefore shown that what appears individual is often also social and political. In Beautiful World, Where Are You in particular, the world of writing itself occupies a central place. Rooney directly explores the unease of those who recognise the contradictions of the present but cannot find a straightforward solution to the conflict between their convictions and the way they live. Through writing, however, they are able to engage in a form of resistance against the logic of the market.

It is against those very market forces and power dynamics that her fiction interrogates that Rooney now finds herself confronting the world beyond her literary universe. A work of art is not simply “a work of art”: it can also reflect upon reality itself. By accepting the consequences of her political position, Rooney takes this reflection beyond the page, without retroactively turning her novels into ideological manifestos. A novel does not need to contain an explicit political statement for its author to feel a responsibility to intervene in the world.