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Sally Rooney: already supported the Israel boycott in several open letters
Photo: Erik Voake / Getty Images
The Irish writer Sally Rooney is currently one of the best-known young authors worldwide: In 2018, she was already on the longlist of the Man Booker Prize for her novel “Conversations with Friends”.
The title has been translated into a dozen languages.
Her new title "Beautiful World, Where Are You" was published in September - the German version "Schöne Welt, where are you" followed in the same month.
Now, however, it has been announced that Rooney does not want her book to be translated into Hebrew, according to media reports.
The Israeli publisher Modan had therefore sent an inquiry to the author.
But Rooney refused.
Rooney has not yet commented on the reports.
According to information from the Israeli daily »Haaretz«, a spokeswoman told Modan that the author supports a »cultural boycott« of Israel and therefore does not allow a Hebrew translation of her new novel.
In response to inquiries from the British daily newspaper »Daily Telegraph«, a publisher's spokesman confirmed the rejection.
However, Modan did not comment on whether the grounds referred to a boycott of Israel.
Solidarity with Kamila Shamsie
According to the Israeli newspaper Mako, such a decision would not come "out of nowhere": Two years ago Rooney expressed his solidarity with the Pakistani-British writer Kamila Shamsie in an open letter.
Shamsie was stripped of the Nelly Sachs Prize after her sympathy for the controversial Israel boycott movement BDS became public.
In May 2021, Rooney signed another open letter in which Palestinian artists spoke out against Israeli settlement policy.
Over the past few months, cultural workers have repeatedly called for a boycott of Israel.
The musician Roger Waters from the rock band "Pink Floyd" was one of the signatories of the open letter in May.
In Germany, more than a thousand artists and intellectuals opposed the federal government's BDS decision in a public statement at the end of 2020.
BDS stands for »Boycott, Divest, Sanction« and is a boycott campaign against the State of Israel.
With the decision, the movement was classified as anti-Semitic.
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