Book Pulled After Opal Got Rumbled

Should she want to, Kaavya Viswanathan could write a sequel to her controversial first novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life. The second book by the 19-year-old author might be titled How Opal Got Rumbled, Fell Off the Shelves and Blew Her Life in the Movies.

Little, Brown, the publisher of Opal Mehta, decided on Thursday to remove the book from shops following allegations that Viswanathan had plagiarised two novels by Megan McCafferty. In addition DreamWorks, which had optioned the film rights and taken delivery of a draft of a screenplay, is understood to have dropped plans for a feature film.

The alleged plagiarism came to light when the Crimson newspaper of Harvard, where Viswanathan is a student, revealed 40 passages in the two books that were similar or identical in theme or content.

After Viswanathan told the New York Times and NBC's Today that she had a photographic memory and must have unconsciously internalised passages from McCafferty's novels, Little, Brown said it had asked shops to stop selling the book.