80,000 hardback copies of Jonathan Franzen’s critically beloved, Oprah-approved novel of the moment (if not our time), Freedom are being recalled in the U.K. for copy and type setting errors. HarperCollins, the novel’s British publisher, is offering readers the chance to exchange the faulty version for the correct one, which Franzen urges them to do. At a reading over the weekend, the author said that British printers had accidentally used an older draft of the book. The printers say that the mistake did not “originate with them.” Either way, a new, correct version of the novel will be in stores in the U.K. on Monday, the junk copies will likely be headed to the pulper, and we’re left wondering: How many cerulean warblers will have lost their homes because of this mistake? [Bookseller]
