You've probably heard by now that British novelist Ian McEwan has been accused of plagiarising an historical memoir in his novel Atonement. McEwan wrote a well-reasoned and restrained response to the accusation in "The Guardian". And now a number of authors have come to his defence, including Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, John Updike, Zadie Smith, Martin Amis, Thomas Pynchon, and our own Tom Keneally and Peter Carey.
Keneally states that "Fiction depends on a certain value-added quality created on top of the raw material, and that McEwan has added value beyond the original will, I believe, be richly demonstrated."
And Carey acknowledges his past work and the "sampling" he has indulged in.
