When a book becomes influential enough, someone might try to impersonate it, since publishing doesn’t follow any hard rules.
For example, I was explaining to someone that, after (surprisingly not before) I got a job at my local library, I took out a communist manifesto, which I later learned was a fake, with writings in there that were not consistent with the official communist manifesto, such as a call for free love.
I have also spotted a lot of fake versions of Mark Twain books come in, which has a lot of parts deleted or inserted based on the writer’s desire.
On the other side of the issue, lately I’ve been watching a lot of the events unfold in the middle East and have wondered why nobody just ends violence over there for good by making fake Qurans. One or two people have hinted they’ve tried, with some altered movements centered around it (would you call this government gnosticism), but it’s not something you always hear.
What’s the most severe example of a fake version of a book you’ve ever seen/encountered?
Fake Qurans
This wouldn’t work for the exact reason you just pointed out, the fake would be dead obvious even down to a letter. There is only one Quran that probably hundreds of millions of people have memorized, and it would be fairly easy even for an outsider to verify a fake.
Moreover this is a dumb take considering the real reason the middle east is violent is because of the plethora of vassal states courtesy of Uncle Sam.
Even insane Iran is just a US vassal state that happened to backfire because the locals got wise after their democratically elected leader was couped in operation Ajax.
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Egypt is a US shill under Sisi, who also couped the previous democratically elected leader
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Iraq is a pacified US shill state
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KSA, UAE, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait are oil suppliers that get protected by the US military, so they each have an inhumane monarchy of former desert bedouins
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Israel is the military buyback outpost
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Jordan is an Israeli shill state (so by extension the US)
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Syria is actually the only Russian shill
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Lebanon is just a proxy zone between Israel, Syria, and Iran
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Yemen is split in half by already explained oil shills and the Houthis which is their resistance/insurgency group
Anyways, not exactly fake but I remember reading a Mark Twain “book” that took snippets from several stories instead of just the whole thing for each one, so a lot of it lacked proper context which was really annoying. It could have easily fit them in, so no idea if it was trying to censor something or was made as like a sample guide for writing.
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TIL fake books are sold. It has never crossed my mind to check a book like that.
I once found a book in an antique shop that said ‘also sprach Zarathustra’ on the cover. I looked inside and saw immediately that it wasn’t that.
It turned out to be an anti-fascist manifest that was secretly printed during the war, dedicated to ‘Joseph Goebbels, rat catcher of Berlin’.
It was numbered and signed and even contains a blank page with a small printed taped in that says that particular page was destroyed when the gestapo raided the printing shop.
I now own that book, it’s a great conversation piece.
50 Shades of Gray is the worst Twilight fanfic out there
Just look up any popular self-help book on Amazon. You’ll see a ton with a slight variation of the name something added to the title like “Summary of” or “Guide to” or “Secrets of”. Just search for “the subtle art of not giving a f*ck” for plenty of examples.
Yes, I’m part shit posting, but I’m also serious.
The Bible has been translated from translations by many hands over the centuries, and is cherry-picked based on the bias and agenda of a select few influential sources. The fact that there are so many “flavors” of Bibles should be seen as proof of this assertion.
This happens a bunch with anime stuff. The translators, distributors or dubbing team don’t agree with the content and adjust it.
The first Don Quixote book was so popular it spawned a lot of fake sequels. Cervantes killed off Don Quixote in the second book to preclude any more copycats. That’s what I remember anyhow from the preface of a paperback edition from way back.
I didn’t read or see it, but shortly before one of the Harry Potter books (maybe the 5th) was officially released, someone “leaked a pirated copy” online. Lots of people downloaded it and liked it and weren’t suspicious about it. It advanced the plot in a convincing way, and so on. But it was completely fake, written from scratch by a fan of the series. Ha.
I once found a fake Harry Potter book named Harry Potter and Deatbly Hallows, probably just a pirated version of the actual book, never read it, but funny to not spell-check the name.
Yea, I remember reading that one and was really confused when the actual book came out and was much different.
Harry and Dudley bond over Monty Python?
This happened with my friend group and Deathly Hallows. We all read a fake leaked copy before the book came out and made our own personal injokes, like how insane it would be if Harry broke into the Bank and just started flinging Unforgivable Curses at random goblins, or if ANYTHING bad happened to us we’d say *Oh no, Dobby!" and someone would follow up with “We spend two full chapters mourning Dobby.”
it was not a fake leak
Right after the ‘…for dummies’ books became huge suddenly there were ‘complete idiot’s guides to…’ and all kinds of variations
Not the worst, but the Suneater series is a knockoff Dune.
Way, way, waaaay back in the day, someone thought King Lear was too depressing, so they re-wrote it with a happy ending.
It got the support of the powers that be and actually supplanted the original from Shakespeare from 1681 to 1838… 157 years(!)
