BioNTech duo adding to book

The husband-and-wife team who helped make the first COVID-19 vaccine are contributing to a book about their efforts. BioNTech founders Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci are collaborating with Joe Miller of the Financial Times on “The Vaccine,” St. Martin’s Publishing Group announced last week

Publication is scheduled Nov. 2. That’s one week before a book by the head of Pfizer, which teamed with the Germany-based BioNTech to develop the vaccine, is scheduled to come out.

“‘The Vaccine’ will reveal how they were able to develop a panel of vaccine candidates within a matter of weeks, how they convinced major pharmaceutical companies to support their work, how they navigated negotiations with the U.S. administration and the European Union, and how in partnership with Pfizer they managed to produce more than two billion doses for countries around the world,” according to St. Martin’s.

Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla is also working on a book. Harper Business is publishing Bourla’s “Moonshot: Inside Pfizer’s Nine-Month Race to Make the Impossible Possible” on Nov. 9.

Anne Frank passage deleted

Bestselling author Elin Hilderbrand has asked that a reference to Anne Frank in her new novel be taken out after numerous online readers alleged it was insensitive and antisemitic.

“In a flashback scene in Elin Hilderbrand’s novel ‘Golden Girl,’ the main character Vivi compares herself to Anne Frank,” Little, Brown and Co., said. “We are removing this passage from the digital edition of the book immediately, and from all future print editions.”

In “Golden Girl,” Vivi and friend Savannah are talking about staying in the attic of Savannah’s home.

“You’re suggesting I hide here all summer?” Vivi says, then cites the Dutch Jewish girl who, with her family, hid in an Amsterdam attic from the Nazis but was eventually captured and died in a concentration camp. “Like … like Anne Frank?”

Hildebrand wrote she had made a “poor choice, that was tasteless and offensive.”