Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia/The Lying Student

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The Lying Student (

• Section 1 (lines 1–51) takes the form of a bildungsroman, and tells the story of Parizek, a young Bohemian boy who leaves his village after his father is murdered by his uncle. He eventually arrives in Southern Ukraine, where he is welcomed by the locals. Twenty years later, he returns to his home and avenges his father's death.
• Section 2 (lines 52–145) is told in first person by Vilém, a young student who has just finished writing the story of Parizek as a work of fiction. That night, in a
  demons carries him away to a crescent-shaped island for refusing to believe in the story himself. There he spends 20 years listening to stories told by a human-headed bird resembling the mythological gamayun
  . From the bird, Vilém perfects the art of storytelling.
• Section 3 (lines 146–303) begins when Vilém wakes up. He rewrites his story and publishes it in a newspaper. Believing it to be true, the Czech people make Parizek into a national hero and use him to inspire a rebellion.
• In Section 4 (lines 304–380), Vilém is put on trial by the
  Austro-Hungarian Empire for creating the fictional character that incited rebellion. Vilém is banished, just like his protagonist was. The last pages of the manuscript, containing the ending, has been lost.^[2]

Jára Svěrák, a poor man from Prague, wrote the text over almost a decade. It was submitted to several literary journals, but was rejected. A few copies were made at the author's expense, which received critical acclaim. However, these copies were later suppressed, and are now lost.^[1] Shortly afterward, Jára was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army. He was killed in battle in 1917.^[2]

Following the author's death, the original manuscript's whereabouts became unknown. It is thought to have been in the possession of Edward Rydz-Śmigły prior to the German invasion of Poland in 1939, where it was seized by Nazi officials.^[3] After World War II it again went missing.

Most of the manuscript was rediscovered in an antique shop in 1981.^[1]

Historians debate whether Jára, the son of an uneducated peasant, could have written the text, which frequently references obscure mythology,

Literary critic Jan Čulík has suggested a young Karel Čapek as the poem's true author, citing the author's interest in surrealism and political satire.^[4]