Margaret Seltzer’s memoir of Los Angeles Gang Life, Love and Consequences, was a fabrication, reports the New York Times. The book has been recalled by the publisher, Riverhead Books.
This news comes just days after Belgian writer Misha Defonseca admitted that her book, Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years, which details her, um, life with wolves following the murder of her parents by Nazis, was fake.
The book was a bestseller in Europe, translated into 18 languages, and the basis for a hit French movie now showing across the continent. After documents emerged that discredited Defonseca’s story, her Belgian lawyer issued a statement admitting that she isn’t Jewish and that she spent the war safely in Brussels.
Oddly, Defonseca wasn’t even mentioned in the New York Times article, which pointed to recent cases of literary fraud like James Frey and JT Leroy.