New York takes a swing at the Jane Friedman mystery at the top of this week’s Intelligencer, reporting a possibly controversial decision that Ms. Friedman made in April at the London Book Fair when she moved a book party for Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany out of the HarperCollins booth because she found him too anti-Israel.
That "because" is disputed by a source close to Ms. Friedman, who tells New York that the author’s politics had nothing to do with Ms. Friedman’s decision to move his party out of the HC booth. The same source says that Ms. Friedman’s abrupt exit from the company was not related to any of this.
