Adventures in engineering

How Opal Mehta Got Caught...

Further to my earlier post about possible plagiarism spotted in the book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, And Got A Life, further developments have occurred. Following the discovery of similarities in her novel to both Megan McCafferty's novels as previously mentioned, eagle-eyed readers have now found similarities with Meg Cabot's Princess Diaries, a novel by Sophie Kinsella and Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. Little, Brown, Kaavya Viswanathan's publishers, have now asked booksellers to withdraw the book, and have no plans for a revised edition.

The fact that New Jersey's The Record, where Ms Viswanathan wrote a dozen features while working as an intern for the paper, is now using a service to vet her articles - surely a case of bolting the stable door after the horse has long gone - is merely adding gilt to the gingerbread. I'm now feeling a little sorry for the girl. Thought not much.

I wonder how her fellow students - the university newspaper was the one who exposed her, after all - will react to this news.

posted by Tamburlaine @ 6:04 pm