'Honour killing' writer faces suit

By GREG ANSLEY

Author Norma Khouri faces legal action by her British publisher after finally admitting in a television interview that significant parts of her bestselling book, Forbidden Love, were fabrications.

The book, which purported to be the true story of a Jordanian Muslim friend murdered in an honour killing for her love of a Christian soldier, won international acclaim before it was exposed as a hoax by the Sydney Morning Herald's literary editor, Malcolm Knox.

Forbidden Love has been withdrawn from sale by Australian publisher Random House, and the planned sequel, A Matter of Honour, has been cancelled.

On Tuesday night, Khouri appeared on the Nine Network's A Current Affair and admitted that instead of spending most of her life in Jordan, as claimed in her book, she had instead lived much of it in Chicago.

"When I wrote the memoir I chose to write only about my time in Jordan, and I have literary licence to do so," she said from the United States, where she has remained in hiding since the scandal broke.

Khouri also claimed she had not received any royalties for Forbidden Love.

But yesterday, Larry Findlay, the managing director of Transworld, her British publisher, told ABC radio's AM programme that Khouri had been paid for the book and that Transworld would sue for breach of contract.

"If there are serious factual inaccuracies - which she's admitted to - then how do we know what to believe?" he said.

"You know, if the book is non-fiction, everything within it has to be true and she can't pick and choose which bits are true and which bits are not ...

"She has received a very substantial advance against royalties owed."

Last week, shortly before presenting Random House in Sydney with documentation she claimed would substantiate the truth of the book, Khouri instructed her Brisbane lawyers to start defamation proceedings against Knox and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Random House subsequently rejected the documents as evidence of the truth of the book.

An investigation by Knox found that instead of growing up in Jordan and running a hair salon with a woman named Dalia - her best friend and the victim of the honour killing - Khouri had moved to the US when she was 3 years old.

The paper also said she was in fact a con-artist named Norma Bagain.

She was also married to Greek-American John Toliopoulos, and had lived for the past two years with their two children on Queensland's Bribie Island.

Khouri told A Current Affair that there had been a real friend who had been killed and Forbidden Love was her true story.

"I will never call that book fiction [or] a novel."