brand logo

Booker winner Shehan Karunatilaka denies  plagiarism allegation 

04 Nov 2022

Says Rajpal Abeynayake’s claim ‘baseless, insulting, unfounded, libellous’ Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka has denied the allegation made by senior-journalist-cum-attorney Rajpal Abeynayake that the former had plagiarised an unpublished manuscript of a novella by the latter in his award-winning novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, as “baseless, insulting, unfounded, and libellous”.  In an official statement sent to The Morning yesterday (3) by Karunatilaka, the latter stated: “A claim has been made by a journalist in Colombo that the plot of my novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, was ‘stolen’ from a 56-page untitled ‘novella’ that he sent to me in 2011 seeking an author’s endorsement. His claim is both baseless and insulting. I have shared his email and the ‘novella’ manuscript with my lawyers, who confirm that the claim of plagiarism is entirely unfounded and that the allegations that are made are libellous.  “I have also shared the ‘novella’ with my publishers who confirm that the texts bear no comparison whatsoever with my novel, as there are no shared plots, characters, or text. I have also shared the ‘novella’ with the Booker Prize Foundation, so that they may be assured that the claims are unfounded. I am deeply concerned that journalists in Sri Lanka are passing on these unsupported and unfounded allegations. I would ask that any journalist approached demands to see the document on which these allegations are based. It is sad and disappointing that this statement has to be made. This should be a celebratory moment for Sri Lanka and its writers. I will be making no further comment on this issue.” Former newspaper editor Abeynayake has alleged that internationally acclaimed, award-winning author Karunatilaka had plagiarised a manuscript of his for the latter’s Booker Prize-winning novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. “The crux of my complaint is that Karunatilaka entirely stole the basic plot of what happened before the protagonist in this book died, from my manuscript which was sent to him. After that, he grafted a ghost story about the ghost of the dead chief protagonist with a whodunit, with the whodunit also being dependent on the plot that he stole from me. Mine is also the same whodunit, except that it is presented as more of an ‘am I doing it’ than a whodunit; but it’s the same in his case too, really, except that his ghost doesn’t remember some things, but recalls them. It’s the same plot as in my novella. I don’t see how a forgetful ghost makes for a whodunit, but be that as it may, all this is extremely easy for anybody to see,” claimed Abeynayake in a statement to The Morning.    


More News..