Top 10 Literary Hoaxes

O No. After inviting Holocaust survivor Herman Rosenblat on her show not once, but twice, to promote his memoir Angel at the Fence, Oprah Winfrey proclaimed his memoir "the single greatest love story" she had ever heard. But like James Frey, the Oprah-endorsed author of yore, Rosenblat apparently took it upon himself to "embellish" his life story a bit. That part about meeting his wife after she began secretly tossing apples and bread to him over the fence at the Buchenwald concentration camp? Not true. (Never mind that the book's entire plot, not to mention its title, revolves around this claim). After several Holocaust scholars questioned the book's authenticity (noting that the layout of Buchenwald would not have permitted such clandestine exchanges) and The New Republic published a lengthy article debunking many of the book's central points, Rosenblat fessed up. "I wanted to bring happiness to people," the author explained through his agent a day before the book's publisher decided to cancel the upcoming release. Looks like Rosenblat is destined to join the ranks of disgraced Holocaust author Misha Defonseca, whose A Memoir of the Holocaust Years about escaping the Nazis and being raised by wolves turned out to be — shockingly — not true in the least.