Teenage author's £271,000 deal axed over 'plagiarism'
Laura Roberts
Scotsman, UK
__________
A Scots-educated Harvard undergraduate has had her publishing deal worth half a million dollars (£271,000) scrapped after allegations that she stole work from other authors, including Salman Rushdie.
Kaavya Viswanathan, 19, was awarded one of the biggest contracts in United States literary history for a teenage unpublished author for her novel How Opal Mehta Got Wild, Got Kissed and Got a Life.
However, readers of her campus newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, began e-mailing in similarities between her novel and Meg Cabot's book The Princess Diaries.
The New York Times then pointed out mirrored passages in works by the British author Sophie Kinsella, as well as Salman Rushdie.
Yesterday, the publishers for Miss Viswanathan, who spent six of her primary school years in Scotland, announced they had pulled the novel from bookshops and cancelled plans to publish her second book.
A spokesman for Little, Brown & Co would not clarify whether it would try to recoup any of the reported $500,000 advance.
Last week it emerged there were 40 similarities to two "chick lit" books by Megan F McCafferty, Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings.
Miss Viswanathan admitted to the Harvard Crimson that she borrowed language from two of Ms McCafferty's novels but that any similarities were "unintentional and unconscious".
May 04, 2006
Laura Roberts
Scotsman, UK
__________
A Scots-educated Harvard undergraduate has had her publishing deal worth half a million dollars (£271,000) scrapped after allegations that she stole work from other authors, including Salman Rushdie.
Kaavya Viswanathan, 19, was awarded one of the biggest contracts in United States literary history for a teenage unpublished author for her novel How Opal Mehta Got Wild, Got Kissed and Got a Life.
However, readers of her campus newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, began e-mailing in similarities between her novel and Meg Cabot's book The Princess Diaries.
The New York Times then pointed out mirrored passages in works by the British author Sophie Kinsella, as well as Salman Rushdie.
Yesterday, the publishers for Miss Viswanathan, who spent six of her primary school years in Scotland, announced they had pulled the novel from bookshops and cancelled plans to publish her second book.
A spokesman for Little, Brown & Co would not clarify whether it would try to recoup any of the reported $500,000 advance.
Last week it emerged there were 40 similarities to two "chick lit" books by Megan F McCafferty, Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings.
Miss Viswanathan admitted to the Harvard Crimson that she borrowed language from two of Ms McCafferty's novels but that any similarities were "unintentional and unconscious".
May 04, 2006
