Things aren’t getting any better for Norma Khouri, author of Forbidden Love. Across the ditch on ABC yesterday, Jordanian journalist Lima Nabeal revealed that there are several organisations lining up to sue Khouri in the Jordanian courts, if they get definitive proof her story was a fake.

With Khouri’s publisher, Random House, now examining evidence presented by the writer, this may be sooner rather than later. Larry Finlay, MD at Random’s HQ in London, said that the investigation could be completed within days.

Poynter Online, the web site for journalists, has also picked up the Khouri story. In Flim-Flamming the Hoax Catchers, Ellen E. Heltzel and Margo Hammond examine what appears to be the world’s latest literary hoax. Interesting points arise:

• The original book deal was cut between 'a reputable New York literary agent,' and the book was edited in New York.

• An investigative reporter for the Jordanian Times, Rana Husseini, found the book larded with factual errors. She contacted Random House and Simon & Schuster, the book's New York publisher.

• Factual errors were corrected in the paperback versions. Larger complaints about the book's point of view were interpreted as a difference of opinion.

• Sydney Morning Herald literary editor Malcolm Knox is fluent in Arabic, and was surprised to find that Khouri is not. After an 18-month investigation, Knox and the Herald went public on July 24.

Commenting on the case, Poynter's Hammond says

I don't think the problem lies only with publishers failing to vet their authors — a determined liar, as we have seen in this country, can fool a lot of people. I think a greater problem is the rush to print books these days that feed into current prejudices.

Heltzel adds that

Publishers protect themselves by putting a line in authors' contracts that stipulates they are telling the truth … but it may need more than a line in a contract to keep the flim-flammers (and disenchanted book buyers) at bay.

At the same time, book critics also need to look beyond a given work for contradictory evidence, either in other books about the subject, their own research or in the writer herself. This is what establishing credibility is all about. As Simon & Schuster's Adam Rothberg pointed out to me, the skeptics were few when Khouri's book came out. “She was interviewed by numerous journalists. She tells a very convincing story.”

Related reading Top Ten Literary Hoaxes article in the Guardian