Books

The heroine is a passionate, headstrong beauty from the South who struggles to save the family estate and falls for a dashing stranger . . . A Cliff's Notes summary of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind? Not quite. It is the plot of La Bicyclette Bleue (The Blue Bicycle), a 400-page 1981 best seller by French novelist Regine Deforges. This week Deforges and her publishing company, which she now owns, are fighting to save their own fortunes in Paris, where they are defendants in a plagiarism suit brought by Mitchell's heirs.

In Italy another Gone With the Wind clone has surfaced under the title L'Orto del Paradiso (The Garden of Paradise). When the heroine of Rosa Giannetta Alberoni's novel kisses her amante ("Arianna seemed to hear a roaring, as if she had held seashells against her ears"), the moment echoes the heart-thudding scene between Scarlett O'Hara and Ashley Wilkes ("There ) was a low curious roaring sound in her ears as of seashells being held against them"). Yet despite a plethora of parallel passages, Alberoni denies she has ever read Mitchell's novel. By contrast, Deforges admits that she borrowed heavily from Gone With the Wind -- but only for the first 100 pages. At that point, says Deforges, she tired of the "literary game" and set off on her own tangent about her heroine's adventures in Vichy France.

If found liable, Deforges could be required to turn over the profits of all French and English editions of Bicyclette, estimated at about $16 million before taxes. Mon Dieu! With so much money at stake, even Rhett Butler might have given a damn.