Literary experts find John Hughes’ plagiarism defence unconvincing

Scholars respond to author's explanation for his new book appearing to copy some parts of classic texts

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Literary academics have taken the Australian author John Hughes to task for apparently copying extracts from some classic texts including The Great Gatsby in parts of his new book, The Dogs.

On Thursday Guardian Australia published a 1,700-word article by Hughes in which he gave his explanation for why some extracts from F Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel, Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front had made their way into his novel. Guardian Australia has cross-referenced all the similarities between Hughes' work and sections from those classic texts and found some cases in which whole sentences were identical or where just one word had changed.