Faked books follow long tradition of literary swindles

0 Comments | AFP, March, 2008

PARIS (AFP) — Two much touted books exposed as fakes in recent weeks -- a searing US memoir on life with gangs and drugs and a best-seller-turned-movie on the Holocaust-- have rocked the publishing world but are only the latest in an ignominious literary tradition of bogus tales and trumped-up protagonists.

The most recent was revealed on Tuesday by the New York Times about a newly published work the paper itself had not only praised but whose author it had also profiled in a special article.

"Love and Consequences," a memoir about life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in a foster home on the rough side of South Central Los Angeles, was a complete fabrication, it said.

Its author, named as Margaret Jones, turned out to be a pseudonym for...