Harry Potter and the Foreign Knockoffs

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Rowling may have penned her final<I> Harry Potter</I> novel, but that hasn’t stopped Chinese authors from churning out a raft of unauthorized knock-offs sold under Rowling’s name, with titles like<I> Harry Potter and the Hiking Dragon</I>. </div> <div> More foreign counterfeit novels about the famous boy wizard are coming soon, some with slightly more political overtones than Rowling’s originals. So grab a handful of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans (or a Chocolate Frog, if you prefer) and get ready for:</div> <bR> <div> <I>Harry Potter and the Eyes of the Great Satan</I> (Khomeini & Sons, Tehran)</div> <div> Mercenary Russian and Chinese “techno-wizards” work magic to bring “peaceful” nuclear power to the oil-rich land of Persia.  Draco Malfoy steals Harry’s invisibility cloak and sells it to the Iranians, who find it isn’t nearly large enough to shield the country’s nuclear-weapons sites from the Muggle (non-magical) spy satellites of the Great Satan.  Iran’s Ministry of Magic hosts a conference denying the crimes of Voldemort, and invites pseudo-historians and Death Eater-sympathizers from all over the world to attend. Inside the Iranian Ministry, “moderates” and hard-liners heatedly debate whether Danish cartoonists, Salman Rushdie and other “enemies of Islam” should be put to death quickly or made to first suffer the agonizing Cruciatus Curse.</div> <bR> <div> <I>Harry Potter and the Non-Interfering Nations</I> (Tianamen Sq. Publishing, Beijing)</div> <div> Harry and a delegation of Hogwarts students fly by broomstick to the 2008 International Wizarding Olympics in Beijing, which is magically free of dissidents and protesters. Using only chopsticks for wands, Chinese government sorcerers cast a spell that blows all of Beijing’s notorious smog into the “renegade Chinese provinces” of Tibet and Taiwan. This allows the Chinese national Quidditch team to streak to glorious victory across clear, blue skies – the likes of which haven’t been seen over Beijing since the Ming Dynasty. Chinese security aurors try to detain Harry’s one-time girlfriend Cho Chang for unspecified “magical crimes against the state,” but she manages to disapparate away at the last second, leaving them fuming.</div> <bR> <div> <I>Harry Potter and the Ex-KGB Agent</I> (Putin Press, Moscow and St. Petersburg)</div> <div> Harry discovers that the radioactive poisoning in London of a former Russian spy was actually a devious plot by Voldemort to smear Russia’s benevolent leader, Vladimir the Great. (In England, however, Fleet Street’s Union of Magical Journalists cries foul when right-wing, media Muggle mogul Rupert Murdoch, the new owner of<I> The Daily Prophet</I> and its sister business broadsheet,<I> The Daily Profit</I>, overrules his editors and kills the story.) Kremlin wizards use the Imperius Curse to bend Russia’s neighbors to its will, re-uniting the Warsaw Pact countries to the jubilation of all concerned. In Moscow, Hermione swoons upon meeting the dashing “Vlad.” </div> <bR> <div> <I>Harry Potter and the Mesopotamian Mess</I> (Some Iraqi guy living in a bombed-out basement and his old PC, Baghdad)</div> <div> Harry and the gang are asked to mediate peace between warring Sunni and Shiite wizards in modern-day Iraq. Hermione prepares for the mission by researching the treaty that ended the bloody Goblin Civil War of 1120-35, and she annoys Harry, Ron and Baghdad’s local magical community by lecturing them about it incessantly. In Anbar province, Ron is tragically felled by an i.e.c. (improvised exploding curse).</div> <bR> <div> <I>Harry Potter and the Seeds of Doubt</I> (Moveon.org Publishers, Berkeley)</div> <div> Hermione plants magical seeds of doubt in the mind of the U.S. president, causing him to see shades of gray for the first time in his life. Wracked with guilt over the war in Iraq, the President resigns, gives all his money away to maimed American soldiers, and moves to a monastery to start a life of quiet introspection and good works. Meanwhile, members of the Order of the Phoenix destroy the Vice President’s hidden stash of Polyjuice Potion, outing him as none other than . . . Voldemort in disguise.</div> <bR> <div> <I>Martin Kimel is a Washington attorney and occasional satirist. He is not writing a fake</I> Harry Potter<I>.</I></div> <bR> <div>   <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">var site="sm4sitemeter";var g_frames=true; </script> <script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript1.2" src="http://sm4.sitemeter.com/js/counter.js?site=sm4sitemeter"> </script> <noscript> <a href="http://sm4.sitemeter.com/stats.asp?site=sm4sitemeter" target="_top"> <img src="http://sm4.sitemeter.com/meter.asp?site=sm4sitemeter" alt="Site Meter" border=0></a> </noscript>    </div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>