The inaugural Emirates Airlines International Festival of Literature in Dubai got off to a rocky start yesterday with reports that Geraldine Bedell, originally under consideration but not on the festival’s final schedule, had been disinvited because her novel, The Gulf Between Us, contains references to homosexuality. “I do not want our festival remembered for the launch of a controversial book,” the Times of London reports festival director Isobel Abulhoul wrote to Bedell. “If we launched the book and a journalist happened to read it, then you could imagine the political fallout that would follow.” Bedell also told the Times of […]