Real Writers Defend One of Their Own Against Frivolous Charge of Plagiarism

The New York Times reports that, in one of many letters published in the Telegraph in support of Ian McEwan, Thomas Keneally, the author “Schindler’s List,” wrote “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.” If not, Mr. Keneally added, “God help us all.”

Thomas Pynchon said that “that McEwan ‘merits not our scolding but our gratitude’ for using details from another author’s book.”

The Telegraph reports that in an extraordinary campaign launched yesterday, many of the world’s best known authors rallied around McEwan, complaining that the future of historical novel-writing was threatened if they could not copy or borrow details from eyewitnesses to history. Other novelists backing the author include John Updike, Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Thomas Keneally and Zadie Smith. Their confessions are part of an extraordinary campaign of support for McEwan.

Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist, playwright and journalist who has lived in Jerusalem since 1971 and who writes regularly to her mailing list about Israel and Jewish issues. Naomi has published eight internationally best selling novels, and is the author of a hit play (Women's Minyan) which has been performed more than 500 times in Israel's National Theatre (Habimah) as well as in the United States and Argentina. She is a tireless advocate for women's rights in Israel, campaigning against gender segregation on Israeli buses and bias in rabbinical courts.

Naomi is a sought-after lecturer all over the world. If your group is interested in hosting Naomi, please click here.

Women to the Back of the Bus!!

I Am Not Sitting in the Back of the Bus (published in the Jewish Chronicle on 23 Feb 2007) - Why, together with other women, I filed suit to put an end to the primitive and degrading gender-segregated bus lines now popping up all over Israel.

Read my original article about how I was attacked by a religious fanatic because I refused to move to the back (the "women's section") of a Jerusalem bus.

Read about an American woman beaten because she refused to move to the back of a Jerusalem bus.

Read my article explaining why segregated buses are just the latest crazy idea of fanatics with too much free time on their hands.

Read about haredi women who want to sit with their families and don't want to be forced to crowd together in the back of the bus.

Israel Bus Rule Sparks Religious Row - How the liberal western media perceive all this fanaticism.