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High demand for Kaavya's book

Sangeeth Kurian

MORE INTEREST NOW: A reader leafing through Kaavya Vishwanathan's controversial book at a bookshop in the capital. — Photo: C. Ratheesh Kumar

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Allegation of plagiarism against the teenaged writer Kaavya Vishwanathan and her publisher pulling the book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life off the shelves in the U.S. has triggered an excessive demand for the novel among book lovers in the city.

Ever since the Harvard sophomore confessed to copying passages from another writer's books, all leading book centres in the city have been flooded with calls checking the availability of the book. The decision by Little, Brown and Company, publisher, to recall all editions from store shelves too has heightened the curiosity.

Similarities were reported between the teenage author's debut novel and two novels written by Megan McCafferty, an author of popular young-adult books.

Said N.E. Sudheer, manager, Modern Book Centre: "The book has become noted a lot after the controversy and we have been getting frequent phone calls in the last couple of days checking its availability." The book centre had 10 copies of the novel on its rack, received as part of the launch nearly a month ago. "Since the book was not fast moving, we were planning to return the unsold ones back to the distributor," Mr. Sudheer said. But the need did not arise. "The last copy we had on our rack too was sold this morning."

According to him, most of the buyers are those in the age group of 20 to 30.

Said B. Sundaresan, manager, TBS Publishers and Distributors: "The book has become a hot cake. But for the controversy, it would have never caught the attention of the readers." "We received only two sample copies of the book from the distributors and the second book was sold only two days ago," Mr. Sundaresan said.

"We have already requested our distributors to provide us with more copies when the book is available again," he said. Meanwhile Penguin, publisher of the book in India, in an official communication by e-mail on Tuesday morning, has instructed retailers to `return all stocks available with them to the distributors for full credit.' The communication has also instructed the retailers to complete the stock returns process within a week as the copies found on display or sale after May 10 may be liable to prosecution.

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