Exposed: a literary liar and her phoney love

[UmmSqueakster 54]

When an author was accused of inventing her profitable memoirs, she turned to film to clear her name. Instead, she was exposed as a fake

By Kathy Marks in Sydney

Published: 18 February 2007

She duped the literary world into believing that she fled Jordan with a fatwa on her head after her best friend was murdered in an "honour killing". Now Norma Khouri is the star of a film that tries to help her to clear her name, but ends up painting her as a compulsive liar.

Khouri's "memoir", Forbidden Love, published in 2003, sold half a million copies in 15 countries. The book, which recounts the fatal love affair between her Muslim friend Dalia and a Christian army officer, tapped into the apparently unquenchable appetite for "confessional" autobiographies.

But, like increasing numbers of books in that genre, her story turned out to be fabricated. Khouri, far from being a Jordanian refugee, had lived in Chicago since the age of three and had an American passport. She was not a virgin, as she claimed; she was married with two children. And Khouri never had a friend called Dalia who was murdered by her father.

continued here

[Bosco 1]

I read this book before it was discovered to be a fraud. I didn't think the book was that great, and while I had not questioned it while reading it, I also wasn't surprised when I read it was all made up. She sounds like a very troubled woman.