{"id":192,"date":"2002-11-07T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2002-11-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crazedmonkey.com\/blog\/uncategorised\/canadian_book_award_controversy.html"},"modified":"2006-10-15T19:38:32","modified_gmt":"2006-10-16T00:38:32","slug":"canadian_book_award_controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/crazedmonkey.com\/blog\/culture\/canadian_book_award_controversy.html","title":{"rendered":"Controversy abound in award-winning Canadian literature"},"content":{"rendered":"

First Yann Martel won the 2002 Booker Prize<\/a> for Life of Pi<\/a> and was accused of plagiarizing<\/a> a novella by Brazilian writer Moacyr Scliar. Evidently the concept of a boy adrift on a raft with a big cat as his companion is used in both books. To his credit, Martel admits he read a review of Scliar’s book Max and the Cats in 1990, thought the premise to be interesting and filed the idea away for later refinement. Is copying a concept plagiarising? Martel, of course, says ‘no’, but Scliar will have to read Martel’s book to be certain.<\/p>\n

Next Austin Clarke, thought to be an also-ran for the Giller Prize<\/a>, wins the award with his novel The Polished Hoe<\/a> amid surprise and shock<\/a> in the literary community. Evidently a lot of people, among them BookTelevision host Daniel Richler, did not simply dislike the book, they intensely<\/em> disliked it. Some people are calling the choice a politically correct decision but others, pointing to the personalities of the 2002 jurors, are saying that’s nonsense.<\/p>\n

Justified controversy or no, all this talk can only be good for Canadian literature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First Yann Martel won the 2002 Booker Prize<\/a> for Life of Pi<\/a> and was accused of plagiarizing<\/a> a novella by Brazilian writer Moacyr Scliar. Evidently the concept of a boy adrift on a raft with a big cat as his companion is used in both books. To his … Read more<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[11,10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/crazedmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/crazedmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/crazedmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/crazedmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/crazedmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/crazedmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/crazedmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/crazedmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/crazedmonkey.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}