A reader told The New York Times there were three parts of Opal Mehta that are similar to passages in Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella.
Updated at 10.40 pm
NEW YORK: Teenage author Kaavya Viswanathan faces more plagiarism claims.
A reader told The New York Times there were three parts of Opal Mehta that are similar to passages in Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella.
While the plots of the two books are distinct, the phrasing and structure of some passages is nearly identical, the Times reported on Tuesday.
Sophie Kinsella is the pen name of Madeleine Wickham, the British author of the Shopaholic series.
Kaavya told The New York Times said she would have no comment on the latest allegations, as did Michael Pietsch, senior vice president and publisher of Little, Brown.
Kinsella could not be reached, the Times said, and her American agent Kim Witherspoon declined to comment.
The Harvard Crimson said she appears to have borrowed passages from Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries too.
The Crimson learned of the similarities between Opal Mehta and both Haroun and The Princess Diaries through e-mail tips.
The Princess Diaries similarity was found on the online weblog DesiJournal.
Earlier, in New Delhi, Rushdie said he feels sorry for the shame that befell Kaavya and hopes she can recover from the fall from grace.
The Booker Prize-winning Rushdie thinks Kaavya, who has been accused of lifting portions from two books for her debut novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life is a victim of the publishing machine and her ambition.
''I am sorry that this young girl pushed by the needs of a publishing machine and no doubt by he own ambition should have fallen into this trap so early in her career. I hope she can recover from it,'' Rushdie told CNN-IBN.
The passages compared between Opan Mehta and American author Megan McCafferty's Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings are far too many and the similarities are too extensive, saID Rushdie, who has not read Kaavya's book that had won her a $500,000 deal from her publisher.
Kaavya's publisher Little, Brown recalled copies of Opal Mehta' from bookstores in the English-speaking world, including the United States, UK and India last week after
McCafferty and her publisher rejected Kaavya's explanation and apology.
DreamWorks had halted work on a movie it was to make based on Kaavya's novel, a source had told The Los Angeles Times last Friday.
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