Feb
29
Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years which related a Jewish child’s Holocaust experience including trekking 1900 miles across Europe with a pack of wolves (I know, I thought I saw that Disney movie too) is apparently not a memoir but a pack of fiction (or pack of lies, but I thought that was too easy).
Misah Defonseca’s book was translated into 18 languages and made into a french film. The author currently lives in Massachusetts and is 71 years old. I mention her age specifically because I know that we aren’t supposed to say anything negative about someone over the age of, say, 50, even if what they did would be considered a fraud on the public.
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Open Threads at Dear Author. Want to know what new releases are out this month and what readers are excited about reading? Check out the threads below. 
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Does she play the violin as well? Sorry, couldn’t help myself. What’s with all the fake memoirs recently? It’s like an epidemic!
I do wonder how often the publishers are actually complicit in that they look for/push for the greater ‘authenticity’ that a memoir has over a novel.
And while we are talking publishers and being lied to and taken to the cleaners: any news on Penguin/Dorchester/Kensington/CE? I saw that at least 2 CE books have been published so far this year and it seems poor Tolme was plagiarized again in another 2007 book of CE’s (see comments on CE cover snark on SBTB).
What, does a memoir have more cache than a piece of fiction? Wouldn’t the book worked as a simple work of fiction? I don’t get it.
The backstory is almost more interesting than the actual “memoir.”
Defonseca was giving talks about her imaginary life when she was approached by a small independent publisher named Jane Daniel. Daniel apparently decided not to look too closely at the details of Defonseca’s story before publishing it. Since Defonseca wanted to tell her story in French, Daniel convinced her next-door neighbor–a retired French professor–to write the book.
After it was published in 1997, both Defonseca and the next-door neighbor sued Daniel for breach-of-contract. The judge trebled the damages awarded by the jury to 32.4 MILLION DOLLARS!
THAT’S when Daniel decided to try to discredit the book.
Huh. No honor among thieves, hmm?