HarperCollins Halts Editing Process on Book About Jamal Khashoggi
Khashoggi, a critic of Saudi Arabia, was murdered at the country’s consulate in Turkey.

Osman Orsal/Reuters
The author of a book on Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was murdered by Saudi agents at the country’s consulate in Turkey, said the publisher HarperCollins had halted the editing process—forcing her to pull the book entirely. Karen Attiah, his editor at The Washington Post and the book’s author, made the announcement on Twitter Monday after the newspaper published an excerpt from the work. Khashoggi had been targeted due to the regime’s zero-tolerance policy on political dissent. Before his murder, he had reportedly planned to establish an outlet focusing on counter propaganda against the country. Attiah’s work, entitled, Say Your Word, Then Leave: The Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi and the Power of the Truth, is still listed as a HarperCollins book on sources such as Amazon, but a spokesperson for the company said it was no longer the publisher. Attiah did not respond to a request for comment.
However, after nearly four years of writing the book, meeting every deadline, my (now former) publisher inexplicably stopped the editing process, forcing me to pull the book.
— Karen Attiah (@KarenAttiah) October 2, 2023
It has been an agonizing setback, but I won't stop fighting to tell the story, and get it out there.
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