Ben Okri, the Booker Prize winning author, has accused his editor of "exaggerating his own importance" after he claimed to have rewritten some of the writer's work.
Booker Prize winning author Ben Okri Photo: REX
Mr Okri, 52, added that he felt sorry for a man who feels it necessary "to claim the hard-won achievement of others".
The literary row, just the latest between authors and editors, broke out after Robin Robertson, 58, spoke to the Daily Telegraph earlier this year in an article about poetry.
During the article, Mr Robertson, a celebrated editor and poet in his own right, made the claim that he had to rewrite the dialogue of the London-based Nigerian in the short story collection "Stars of the New Curfew".
Mr Robertson, from Aberdeen, Scotland, said that he was not interested in finding "something I can put my stamp on" and that "editors should be completely invisible".
But then he added: "I had to rewrite a book of Ben Okri’s written in Lagos patois, and I hope it doesn’t show that it was an Aberdonian who was doing it."
The comment appeared to have angered Mr Okri, the Booker winner for his novel The Famished Road in 1991, who has written a letter that appears in today's Daily Telegraph Book Section.
"I read with amusement your article (The Mystery of Poetry Editing, 23/1/12) in which Robin Robertson claims he "redid" my dialogue in "Stars of the New Curfew"," it reads.
"While it is true that Mr Robertson is a fine editor, he also has a tendency to exaggerate his own importance.
"I am disappointed that Mr Robertson feels he needs to make such claims.
"He certainly did not and could not "redo" my dialogue. A simple comparison with the Nigerian dialogue in "Incidents at the Shrine", an earlier volume of stories, will make that evident.
"One has to feel a little sorry for Mr Robertson that he feels it necessary to claim the hard-won achievement of others."
Mr Robertson, who is poetry and fiction editor at the publisher Jonathan Cape, said he could not see why Mr Okri was getting so "overwrought" about his comment.
"I only ever edited one book of Ben's, a fine collection of stories called Stars of the New Curfew, which was published in 1988 by Secker & Warburg".
Full story here.
"I read with amusement your article (The Mystery of Poetry Editing, 23/1/12) in which Robin Robertson claims he "redid" my dialogue in "Stars of the New Curfew"," it reads.
"While it is true that Mr Robertson is a fine editor, he also has a tendency to exaggerate his own importance.
"I am disappointed that Mr Robertson feels he needs to make such claims.
"He certainly did not and could not "redo" my dialogue. A simple comparison with the Nigerian dialogue in "Incidents at the Shrine", an earlier volume of stories, will make that evident.
"One has to feel a little sorry for Mr Robertson that he feels it necessary to claim the hard-won achievement of others."
Mr Robertson, who is poetry and fiction editor at the publisher Jonathan Cape, said he could not see why Mr Okri was getting so "overwrought" about his comment.
"I only ever edited one book of Ben's, a fine collection of stories called Stars of the New Curfew, which was published in 1988 by Secker & Warburg".
Full story here.
