5 famous plagiarism and fraud accusations in the book world

As the author of a novel about Edgar Allan Poe's wife faces controversy, here are five plagiarism and fraud cases that shook the literary community.

5. Kaavya Viswanathan

In 2006, Viswanathan, a Harvard University student, seemed to have scored about as big as a college sophomore possibly could. Not only was her novel, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got A Life," being published by Little, Brown, but she had also secured a movie deal for an adaptation of the book. But the Harvard Crimson reported after its release that several passages bore suspicious similarities to parts of the young adult novels "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings" by Megan McCafferty. Viswanathan said the plagiarism was unintentional, but the novel was taken off bookstore shelves and her contract with Little, Brown for a second book was cancelled. The New York Times and the Harvard Crimson later found passages that they alleged were similar to works by Salman Rushdie, Meg Cabot, and Tanuja Desai Hidier.

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