The queer and feminist bookstore Violette and Co had been reported by the Ministry of the Interior to the prosecutor for selling a notebook titled with an anti-Zionist theme intended for children. The judicial investigation was closed without further action, the book in question having not been found during the search, unusual, carried out at the store’s premises in Paris.
Violette and Co had denounced a “disproportionate raid (…) very concerning for the fundamental freedoms of bookstores”. Two months after the search of the queer and feminist bookstore in the XIe arrondissement of Paris, on January 7, it is thus cleared of wrongdoing: the investigation opened for “unauthorized importation of a youth publication” was closed without further action, as learned this Monday, March 17, by Agence France-Presse (AFP), for failing to locate the book in question during the search of the premises, conducted by five police officers and the public prosecutor.
The opening of a judicial investigation had followed the bookstore’s report by the Ministry of the Interior, “for importation of a publication destined for youth containing content dangerous for them”. At issue was the sale of a children’s coloring album about the history of Palestine, placed in a shop window last summer with its title echoing the anti-Zionist slogan From the River to the Sea (“From the river to the sea”), about which the government pointed to its “strong historical and ideological bias”. The Paris prosecutor’s office then specified that “this work, published in South Africa, had been the subject of an import ban by the press commission of the Directorate for Judicial Protection of Youth (DPJJ)” and that its sale constituted an offense, punishable by one year of imprisonment and a fine of 3,750 euros.
The bookstore contests the search
But according to the bookstore’s lawyer, Ms. Thibault Laforcade, only an order from the Ministry of the Interior truly prohibits the book from being sold, the opinion of the Directorate of Judicial Protection of Youth being advisory. “We will challenge this search measure, he stated to the Parisien newspaper. Everything was done against the law, for reasons that seem more political than legal.”
Accused of antisemitism, the establishment had been the target of vandalism and threats during the summer of 2025. The case divided the Paris City Council; the right-wing led by Rachida Dati (LR) wielded it to refuse a subsidy from the capital to its 40 independent bookstores, eventually adopted by the Socialist majority. During the campaign for the municipal elections, Emmanuel Grégoire, the Socialist candidate, expressed his support for Violette and Co, while his rival for the second round answered us: “Is it because it’s a LGBT bookstore, should we condone that it has a book that calls for hatred against children?”
