Ihimaera plagiarism row has a few chapters left

Witi Ihimaera says he will buy back remaining copies of the book. Photo / Richard Robinson

The literary establishment and Auckland University are taking Witi Ihimaera's plagiarism in their stride.

Amid the storm over The Trowenna Sea, they appear to be treating it as an irritating disturbance they'd like to say is not so important.

Ihimaera was even named an arts laureate by the New Zealand Arts Foundation for his lifetime work. There are no plans to delve further with plagiarism checks on Trowenna Sea or other works to close the issue.

Tomorrow, the New Zealand Listener - in which reviewer Jolisa Gracewood broke the story two weeks ago with examples of plagiarised content - reveals more unattributed lines in The Trowenna Sea from other people's work.

It is not clear whether these have been acknowledged by Ihimaera.

The latest Listener quotes Margaret Soltan, a professor of English at George Washington University in Washington DC, who criticises Ihimaera.

But she mostly criticises Auckland University, where Ihimaera is a distinguished professor and lecturer.

She says the university has too-readily accepted the author's word that the plagiarism was inadvertent.

"Pretending it did not happen is the sort of thing a very provincial university will do," she says.

Yesterday, author C.K. Stead criticised the university for minimising the Ihimaera plagiarism controversy, and said it would reflect badly on it until professors acknowledged the seriousness of the situation.

Ihimaera said this week he would buy back the remaining copies of the book.

A revised edition of The Trowenna Sea will be published next year, with a new section explaining the background and making full acknowledgement to writers whose work is drawn on.

Penguin Group general manager of marketing Sandra Lees said Penguin "had done the right thing by the book and the author by withdrawing the book".

Asked why Penguin had not picked up the plagiarism during its own publishing processes - using expert advice - she said that for fiction it would be very tough for anybody, unless they were intimate with the author's previous works.

"For us to do that for every title would cost us a lot of money to run through [computer] plagiarism programmes."

Penguin New Zealand publishing director Geoff Walker sought to draw a line under the affair.