On Māori novelist Witi Ihimaera

Māori novelist Witi Ihimaera is one of the winners of the 2017 Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement.

About 8 years earlier, in November 2009,, iol had a post


Writer Witi Ihimaera - a university professor who became in 1973 the first indigenous Maori to have a novel published and went on to write The Whale Rider - has admitted plagiarism in his latest book, just as he was named a national arts treasure.

Reviewer Jolisa Gracewood outed Ihimaera in the weekly New Zealand Listener, saying that she stopped looking after identifying 16 different passages written by other authors in Ihimaera's historical novel The Trowenna Sea, which was published this month.

(...)

Ihimaera, 65, who has had 14 novels and 12 collections of short stories published since his debut 36 years ago, apologised for his "inadvertent copying" in The Trowenna Sea and said he would buy back all unsold copies and produce a second edition acknowledging all sources next year.

His announcement was followed by the revelation that Ihimaera had also plagiarised a book by a fellow professor at Auckland University, Keith Sorrensen, in another historical novel, The Matriarch, published in 1986.



link: https://www.iol.co.za/entertainment/books/whale-rider-author-accused-of-plagiarism-975531