Category: publishing

The Spanish Nobel prize-winning writer Camilo José Cela has been accused of plagiarising the work of a lesser known author for one of his best-selling books.

Supposedly intended for “writers, readers and anyone interested in what happens on the page”, How Fiction Works belongs to the upper shelf of what is turning into a very considerable critical sub-genre: the literary user’s manual.

“He has been variously described as ‘the strongest literary critic we have’, ‘the most influential critic of his generation’ and ‘one of the few living practitioners of his craft who will be read 50 years from now’. His new book, How Fiction Works, as its faux-utilitarian title ironically implies, is a position paper, a manifesto, a distillation of the arguments and opinions that have underpinned Wood’s criticism and reviews over the past 15 years.”

There are numerous examples of “borrowing, plagiarism, literary theft or copyright infringement — take your pick — that occur in Wallace Stegner’s ‘Angle of Repose,’ which received the Pulitzer Prize in 1972.” So what should be done?

Robert Fisk was surprised when a friend sent him Fisk’s latest book about Saddam Hussein. There was a problem. “I never wrote this book. It wasn’t plagiarism – a common practice in Cairo, which is why I ensure that all my real books are legally published in Arabic in Lebanon. No, this wasn’t plagiarism. This was forgery.”

“To the extent that, as a reviewer, I’m keeping alive – and presumably, ideally, reminding academics that there is – a living tradition of criticism that predates English studies; to that extent, I’m doing something important.”

“Starbucks has defended its decision to sponsor A Long Way Gone, the memoir of former Sierra Leone child soldier Ishmael Beah, despite mounting evidence undermining the book’s credibility.”

“The retail book business in Canada generates annual sales in excess of $1.5-billion, much of them through one company – Indigo Books and Music – but overall sales through traditional book retailers are “flat” at a time when Canadian publishers are releasing more new titles than ever.”

“If nothing else, the Ishmael Beah affair illustrates just how high a premium we are inclined to place on the facts when the book is being sold to us as the truth and nothing but. That absolute claim is the strongest selling point for any work of nonfiction, yet it may prove an achilles heel.”

Ishmael Beah, author of a best-selling memoir about his time as a boy soldier in Sierra Leone, disputes newspaper reports that he had exaggerated his war service, telling The Associated Press on Wednesday that he will “stand by” what he wrote.