The reviews were, quite simply, stupendous. Kirkus, America's high-profile literary magazine, called it a "dazzling, deftly controlled debut". Publishers Weekly purred over the "fine writing" and the crime novelist Duane Swierczynski was impressed enough by an early manuscript to enthuse about an "ambitious and audacious" work.
QR Markham's spy thriller Assassin of Secrets was certainly audacious. Little, Brown, its publisher, admitted last week that whole chunks of the text had been lifted in their entirety from a number of other books, including works by Robert Ludlum, Geoffrey O'Brien and, except for the character names, a six-page stretch from John Gardner's 1981 Bond novel, Licence Renewed. When the literary blog Reluctant Habits started to compile all the instances of plagiarism found thus far, it took its researcher a week to get to page 35. Unsurprisingly, the novel was swiftly removed from bookstores.
It seems incredible that no reviewer, publisher, proofreader or editor had spotted that the story of Jonathan Chase and his battle to protect and serve his country was rather too familiar. With hindsight, it should perhaps have been obvious: even the author's name (his real one is Quentin Rowan) was borrowed from another literary great. Markham was Kingsley Amis's pen-name when he wrote his James Bond novel in the 1960s.
Since then, Rowan has gone to ground in the manner of one of his spies - not least because close inspection of his other writing revealed he'd been appropriating Graham Greene's Our Man In Havana for a story in Paris Review, and Geoffrey O'Brien's Dreamtime for the Huffington Post. Rowan's only comment has been on a blog by another spy novelist - Jeremy Duns - who had the misfortune to call the book an "instant classic". Rowan admitted on Monday that "the inside of my head is not a pretty place right now", apologised, and explained that he began "stealing" because he wanted to impress the editors at Little, Brown. He knew, he said, that by using some of the best-known authors in the thriller genre, he was grappling with a "built-in death wish". "It became like a strange schizophrenic form of gambling."
Or was it? Such an excoriating mea culpa is just a little too dramatically perfect as a story. Earlier this year, The National spoke to David Shields, whose book Reality Hunger is a wonderfully provocative manifesto on the usefulness of the novel - and celebrates plagiarism as a vital cog in creativity. He thinks Rowan shouldn't worry about coming clean with his real motives.
"Surely he was aware of what he was doing, and he wanted us to be involved in the spy game of 'catching' him at it, or recognising the passages," he says. "Surely he was commenting on the nature of who owns the words, who owns the story, who is the author, who is the authority. I've found the entire discussion about him utterly wrongheaded."
So perhaps we should actually be praising Rowan for, somehow, managing to mash up so many sources but still create a coherent narrative. What's been forgotten in the furore is that Assassin of Secrets is, apparently, a great read. The methods are controversial, true, but the work, as Duns said, "takes on the greatest spy thrillers of the Cold War and doesn't just hold its own, but wins".
In Reality Hunger, there is an entire section devoted to hip-hop. And how different, in the end, is Rowan's technique from the use of sampling in music? Some of the most exciting records of recent years have been made up entirely from other people's tunes: Danger Mouse's mash-up of the Beatles' White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album to create the delightfully-named Grey Album, for example. The very first song to popularise hip-hop, Rapper's Delight by the Sugarhill Gang, used sections of Chic's Good Times. Pop music constantly reinvents itself by borrowing from its past - and not always with permission. Although, granted, most of the time, a hip-hop star is appropriating popular songs heard millions of times. There's not so much room for deception.
"But there's no such thing as originality," says Shields, echoing Picasso's "all art is theft" quote which is also Reality Hunger's epigraph. "All life on earth - and by extension, technology - is built upon appropriation and reuse of the pre-existing; in Reality Hunger, I pulled out every trick in the book to try to get people to see this. Some did."
Rowan's mistake may have been to try to conceal what he'd done. Such brazen antics are almost impossible in the digital age, where every hunch can immediately be checked via search engines. The book would still have been interesting as a work of art that wore its influences on its sleeve - even if publishers might have been more reticent about it.
Still, copies of Assassin of Secrets that were sold are now going for hundreds of dollars. Who was it that said talent imitates, genius steals?
THREE
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The%20specs
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TV: World Cup Qualifier 2018 matches will be aired on on OSN Sports HD Cricket channel
MATCH INFO
Bangla Tigers 108-5 (10 ovs)
Ingram 37, Rossouw 26, Pretorius 2-10
Deccan Gladiators 109-4 (9.5 ovs)
Watson 41, Devcich 27, Wiese 2-15
Gladiators win by six wickets
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
Power: 398hp from 5,250rpm
Torque: 580Nm at 1,900-4,800rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
On sale: December
Price: From Dh330,000 (estimate)
At a glance
Global events: Much of the UK’s economic woes were blamed on “increased global uncertainty”, which can be interpreted as the economic impact of the Ukraine war and the uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Growth forecasts: Cut for 2025 from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. The OBR watchdog also estimated inflation will average 3.2 per cent this year
Welfare: Universal credit health element cut by 50 per cent and frozen for new claimants, building on cuts to the disability and incapacity bill set out earlier this month
Spending cuts: Overall day-to day-spending across government cut by £6.1bn in 2029-30
Tax evasion: Steps to crack down on tax evasion to raise “£6.5bn per year” for the public purse
Defence: New high-tech weaponry, upgrading HM Naval Base in Portsmouth
Housing: Housebuilding to reach its highest in 40 years, with planning reforms helping generate an extra £3.4bn for public finances
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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What can you do?
Document everything immediately; including dates, times, locations and witnesses
Seek professional advice from a legal expert
You can report an incident to HR or an immediate supervisor
You can use the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation’s dedicated hotline
In criminal cases, you can contact the police for additional support
Various Artists
Habibi Funk: An Eclectic Selection Of Music From The Arab World (Habibi Funk)
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Yemen's Bahais and the charges they often face
The Baha'i faith was made known in Yemen in the 19th century, first introduced by an Iranian man named Ali Muhammad Al Shirazi, considered the Herald of the Baha'i faith in 1844.
The Baha'i faith has had a growing number of followers in recent years despite persecution in Yemen and Iran.
Today, some 2,000 Baha'is reside in Yemen, according to Insaf.
"The 24 defendants represented by the House of Justice, which has intelligence outfits from the uS and the UK working to carry out an espionage scheme in Yemen under the guise of religion.. aimed to impant and found the Bahai sect on Yemeni soil by bringing foreign Bahais from abroad and homing them in Yemen," the charge sheet said.
Baha'Ullah, the founder of the Bahai faith, was exiled by the Ottoman Empire in 1868 from Iran to what is now Israel. Now, the Bahai faith's highest governing body, known as the Universal House of Justice, is based in the Israeli city of Haifa, which the Bahais turn towards during prayer.
The Houthis cite this as collective "evidence" of Bahai "links" to Israel - which the Houthis consider their enemy.
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
The studios taking part (so far)
- Punch
- Vogue Fitness
- Sweat
- Bodytree Studio
- The Hot House
- The Room
- Inspire Sports (Ladies Only)
- Cryo
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young