Jealous Muggles Hit Back

It had to happen, of course. With the Harry Potter series rocketing to the top of the list of literary blockbusters, other authors are beginning to take some nasty little swipes at Potter scribe J.K. Rowling. The latest entry in the bash-Harry sweepstakes comes from Booker Award-winning author A.S. Byatt, who calls Rowling’s work derivative, simple-minded, and composed “for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons, and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip.”