Faked books follow long tradition of literary swindles

Two much touted books exposed as fakes in recent weeks — a searing US memoir on life with gangs and drugs and a best-seller-turned-movie on the Holocaust– have rocked the publishing world but are only the latest in an ignominious literary tradition of bogus tales and trumped-up protagonists.
But “Born with Wolves” and “Love and Consequences” are hardly the only pieces of fact-turned fiction.

Consider the case of the “Hitler Diaries”, “discovered” by journalist Gerd Heidemann and published in April 1983 by the German news magazine Stern.