Forbidden Love (novel)

Forbidden Love (called Honour Lost in the United States) is a 2003 book written by Norma Khouri, purporting to tell a true story about her best friend in Jordan. The story describes Dalia's love for a Christian soldier Michael, kept secret from her Muslim father due to conflict in religion. Her father eventually finds out and stabs Dalia to death in a so-called honor killing. A year after publication, it was discovered that Khouri had fabricated the tale and that the story was fictional.

The novel centers on the life of Dalia, a young Muslim woman living in Amman, Jordan. When she falls in love with Michael, a young Catholic major in the British Army, she is forced to keep the relationship a secret and rely on her friend Norma to act as an intermediary. Although the lovers are only able to be alone together on a handful of occasions and Dalia's virginity remains intact, her father is so enraged when he hears of the affair from her older brother that he kills her two months after her twenty-sixth birthday. Khouri claimed that as a result, she had been forced to seek asylum in Queensland, Australia.

Questions about Khouri's story surfaced almost immediately.

Several readers wrote on message boards that much of the book didn't ring true. For instance, there were 73 factual errors, some of them basic, anachronisms, and exaggerations (e.g. claiming that Jordan borders Kuwait, "fanciful" depictions of Amman, incorrect statements about Jordanian law, and banknotes that were not printed at that time).

She also aroused suspicions because she spoke perfect American English despite claiming to have never lived in the United States. Additionally, she had promised to donate most of the proceeds to the Jordanian National Association for Women, but had only sent $100. The group was suspicious of her claims from the start, contending that it would have known about such a crime given Jordan's size. After conducting an investigation, it wrote to Random House Australia in September 2003. However, Random House stood by Khouri.

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