Describing Kaavya Viswanathan, who is currently facing plagiarism charge for her debut novel, as 'a victim of her own ambition,' well known writer Salman Rushdie has refused to take the India-born novelist's plea of being innocent saying the 'similarities are too extensive.'

"I have not seen the book, I have seen the passages that were compared between the two books and I must say I do not accept the idea that this could have been accidentally or innocently done. The passages are too many and the similarities are too extensive," Rushdie told CNN-IBN channel.

The teenage desi chick lit writer

He said, "I am sorry that this young girl, pushed by the needs of a publishing machine and, no doubt, by her ambition should have fallen into this trap so early in her career. I hope she can recover from it."

Blaming both author and publisher for the mess, Rushdie said, "Both are responsible. But I know when I write a book it is my name on the book. So I stand or fall by what I sign. And so must she."

Kaavya takes a break from Harvard

Kaavya is facing plagiarism charges for her debut novel How Opal Mehta Got kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life for having similarities with Megan F McCafferty's novels Sloppy Firsts (2001) and Second Helping (2003).

Expressing apologies to McCafferty and anyone who had been 'misled by the unintentional errors,' Kaavya had said that while the central stories of her book and McCafferty's were completely different, she was not aware of how much she may have internalised the latter's words.

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