Description:

In the spring of 2006, the book "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life" was sacrificed to the gods of the publishing establishment. Its author, Kaavya Viswanathan, was thrust into the limelight as a plagiarist and lost her huge book deal. After a few weeks of impassioned debate, the scandal faded to an uncomfortable memory.

But the drama that set the blogosphere on fire was not an isolated incident in the American publishing scene. It illustrated current globalizing trends that undermine the integrity of local subcultures, including the world of high tech development.

Drawing on the author's own experiences with Indian offshore outsourcing, Bring Me the Head of Opal Mehta finds parallels between the public failure of a promising novel and often-unreported failings in Indian offshoring of U.S. technical jobs, and sends out a call to the American technical community to meet head-on the social and logistical challenges of offshore outsourcing.