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After writing my last blog, I remembered that in Courtney Milan’s comment section for her blog post that another Brazilian writer, Lucas Mota, asked Milan to contact him as he’d like to cover the Serruya issue in his blog. I Googled him, found his website, and read his article. Very interesting!

Mota does two new things:

First, after managing to make internet contact with Serruya–quite a feat since many of her accounts have been taken down–he succeeds in getting her to respond to specific questions he asks about the plagiarism allegations and he then includes her answers in his own blog. Mota states his intent is for readers to reach their own conclusions.

Second, Mota examines book reviews listed for Serruya’s book and a book she is accused of plagiarizing. Noticing that the number of posted reviews for her book is higher than expected under certain circumstances, he uses a program to run diagnostics on the reviews for each book to see if they are likely authentic or fake reviews. Mota explains what the program looks at to make this determination. Serruya’s book reviews get a rating of “F” while the other book’s reviews get a rating of “A.”

To read for more detail than the summary above, the link for his 2/23/19 blog is https://www.supostoescritor.com. By the way, I read this in my Chrome browser, which thankfully offers a “translate” button since I don’t read or speak Portuguese.

Karen Taylor Saunders