There’s a storm in Australian literary waters over a book that’s been longlisted for one of our most prestigious prizes, The Miles Franklin. John Hughes’s novel, The Dogs, a book that deals with post war history and has taken him fifteen years to research and write, is under attack. As part of his research, Hughes read Svetlana Alexievich’s English translation of The Unwomanly Face of War, a 1985 non-fiction text, which came out in 2017.

After The Guardian discovered 58 similarities and instances of identical text in The Dogs, Hughes has apologised and tried to explain. He had taken notes as he read Alexievich’s book. And these somehow morphed with notes from the transcripts of his Ukrainian grandmother’s answers to his questions many years earlier. The words became his own. He’s now accused of plagiarism and The Dogs has been withdrawn from the Miles Franklin longlist. John Hughes has apologised but the social media mob on twitter and Facebook is out to get him. People can be unforgiving when someone is accused of stealing another’s words.