Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

Despite an almost universal view in academic and Jewish circles that the book promoted anti-Semitism, it received Australia's most prestigious literary award, with special recognition given to the "ethnic" author.

After an inquiry into the writer's background, it was discovered that Darville had taken the "Demidenko" from a real perpetrator of one of the most notorious incidents of the Holocaust, the massacre at Babi Yar.

Jack Marx, the editor of Australian Style magazine, defended his choice of Darville, asserting that she "does know a lot about World War II."

Robert Klarnet of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies said, "To have a person whose reputation is based entirely on perpetrating a literary fraud, with an anti-Semitic novel, interview and write on a person who is an icon amongst the far right could only have been done with the intention of selling magazines rather than illuminating any issue," he said.