…for some time about a novel that they claim plagiarized the lot of them. They’ve now filed a lawsuit against the writer, her translator, and her publisher.
It’s a complicated case involving plot rather than language theft. The book at issue first came out in Chinese, and is now being marketed, translated, in Canada:
The plaintiffs claim that Zhang’s novel Gold Mountain Blues, originally published in China and released in English earlier this month, lifts certain plot and character elements from six of their works, which deal with the experience of early Chinese immigrants to Canada.
… “The remarkable success of [Gold Mountain Blues] in China is less surprising when considering that it is alleged to have copied significant elements of multiple award-winning books published over the past 25 years in Canada,” said [a] statement [from the writers], which goes on to point out that because readers in China are unlikely to have read the English-language originals, the fictional stories in Gold Mountain Blues would appear unique and new to them.
“Due to the fact that many of the Collective Works are now slated to be published in Chinese and sold in China, the plaintiffs face significant potential losses, including to their reputations, as it will appear to Chinese readers in China that the plaintiffs have copied portions of GMB when, in fact, the Collective Works were first published long before GMB.”