PDA

Bekijk Volledige Versie : Anti-Islam boek ''verboden liefde'' berust op leugens



Zwarte Schaap
28-08-04, 12:00
Australia Author Admits Parts of Best-Seller False

Wed Aug 18, 2004 02:16 AM ET

CANBERRA (Reuters) - The author of a best-selling Australian book about the honor killing of a Jordanian woman has admitted she fabricated parts of her supposed true-life story.
Norma Khouri's "Forbidden Love" was pulled from bookshelves last month after a newspaper reported her story was fake.

"Forbidden Love" tells of Khouri's friendship with a Muslim woman named Dalia. Khouri says she spent her youth in Jordan and ran a hair salon with Dalia, her best friend, when they were in their 20s.

Khouri says in her book she fled Jordan after Dalia's father murdered his daughter for falling in love with a Christian man.

Khouri said she had made up parts of her book -- by changing names, dates, locations and characterizations -- to protect herself, her family and her friends.

"I'm not saying I deny that I've lied. I'm saying that I apologize to all the readers, publishers and agents out there for not letting them know my personal full story," Khouri told Australian television late on Tuesday.

"But I did not lie about Dalia's existence or about her murder or about her life. I will never call that book fiction and I will never call that book a novel," she said in comments widely replayed by Australian media on Wednesday.

Random House Australia, a unit of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG, said Khouri had failed to provide adequate evidence to refute the allegations made against her and that the company would not be publishing the author's sequel, "A Matter of Honor."

"If there are serious factual inaccuracies -- which she's admitted to -- then how do we know what to believe?" Larry Findlay, managing director of Transworld, a unit of Random House Group Ltd in Britain, told Australian radio on Wednesday.

"You know, if the book is non-fiction, everything within it has to be true, and she can't pick and choose which bits are true and which bits are not," he said.

Khouri has said in many interviews that she fled Jordan in fear for her life because of her account of how her friend Dalia was stabbed 12 times by her enraged father after he discovered Dalia's love affair with a Christian soldier.

But The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported last month that it had evidence Khouri only lived in Jordan until she was three and lived in the United States from 1973 until 2000.

The paper said it had learned during an 18-month investigation into Khouri's background that the author had lived in Chicago since she was three. It said it had uncovered numerous other contradictions in her story.

The Herald began its investigation after concerns about the book's authenticity were raised by a women's group in Jordan and in expatriate Jordanian communities.

Random House says book has sold 200,000 copies in Australia and is published in 15 other countries. About 250,000 copies have been sold in total.

© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.