Random House told Sherry Jones that, after signing her to a six-figure deal for two novels about one of the wives of the prophet Muhammad, they were afraid of terrorist retaliation, so they cut her loose. This spurred a lively debate over censorhsip with much posturing on both sides. All of this controversy, Jones told us in one of her first interviews, came as a complete surprise. None of this was good for Random House’s reputation, but they didn’t come out of it nearly as badly as Denise Spellberg, the woman who sabotaged Jones’s path to publication.
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