DesiLit Daily

The plots of the two books are different — Ms. Kinsella's novel is about a young British woman who unwittingly confesses her secrets to a man on a plane, only to discover he is the American head of the company for which she works, while Ms. Viswanathan's is about an Indian-American girl struggling to get into Harvard. But the phrasing and structure of some passages is nearly identical.

In one scene in Ms. Kinsella's book, which was published by Dial Press, the main character, Emma, comes upon two of her friends "in a full-scale argument about animal rights," and one says, "The mink like being made into coats."

In Ms. Viswanathan's book, Opal, the heroine, encounters two girls having "a full-fledged debate over animal rights."

"The foxes want to be made into scarves," one of them says.

There are echoes in another scene in which one of Ms. Kinsella's characters threatens another, "And we'll tell everyone you got your Donna Karan coat from a discount warehouse shop."

In Ms. Viswanathan's version, Opal threatens another girl, Priscilla, saying, "I'll tell everyone that in eighth grade you used to wear a 'My Little Pony' sweatshirt to school every day."

Details and descriptions are also similar. Jack, the love interest in Ms. Kinsella's novel has a scar on his hand; so does Sean, the romantic hero in "Opal." Jack has "eyes so dark they're almost black," so does Sean.

The passages are clustered in the final third of Ms. Viswanathan's book.

Sophie Kinsella is the pen name of Madeleine Wickham, the British author of the popular "Shopaholic" series. "Can You Keep a Secret?," Ms. Kinsella's first novel published in hardcover in the United States, came out here in 2004, more than a year before Ms. Viswanathan began writing "Opal," and the book spent six weeks on the New York Times hardcover fiction best-seller list.

The copying from Ms. Kinsella's book does not seem to be as extensive as Ms. Viswanathan's borrowing from two novels by Megan McCafferty, "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings," both published by Crown, a division of Random House. In that case, Crown contends that more than 40 passages were copied from Ms. McCafferty's books.

Ms. Viswanathan acknowledged plagiarizing from Ms. McCafferty but said that it was "unconscious and unintentional."

Ms. Viswanathan said she would have no comment on the latest allegations, as did Michael Pietsch, senior vice president and publisher of Little, Brown, who last Thursday announced he was pulling "Opal" from bookstores. Ms. Viswanathan's agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh of the William Morris Agency, was traveling and could not be reached.

When told of the similarities between the two books, Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House, which owns Dial Press, said: "If this latest allegation is true, it is very disturbing, but it would be inappropriate to make any further comment until we have an opportunity to thoroughly review the matter."

In an e-mail message, a spokeswoman for Alloy Entertainment, the book packager responsible for several hit series of young adult novels that also helped Ms. Viswanathan develop the concept for "Opal" and craft its first four chapters, said: "We are continuing to refrain from offering comment on any matter relating to Kaavya at this time."

Ms. Kinsella could not be reached. Her American agent, Kim Witherspoon, declined to comment.