When you are looking for Harry, you may bump into Barry. The teenage wizard has a doppelganger that looks very little like his more famous scarred original, has done an Ekta Kapoor saas bahu age leap and is now in his early 20s but is still skulking around Hogwarts School of Magic, basking in his notorious fame. Meet Barry Trotter, unabashed coat-tail rider of the Harry Potter series, who plays to a comparatively older and admittedly smaller audience.

If imitation is obeisance, spoofing lampoons is its own muse. That is how American humorist Michael Gerber fired off Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody, Barry Trotter and the Unnecessary Sequel and Barry Trotter and the Dead Horse. In the world of mocking books, fantasy leads to fun-tasy and self-help to self-flagellation. Nothing is sacrosanct and every book and genre could have its own satirical reply, as fitting as I Moved Your Cheese in response to Who Moved My Cheese?

The list is as long as the genres are varied. The Lord of the Rings was mirrored by Bored of the Rings, along with Soddit (The Hobbit) and The Sellamillion (Silmarillion). Da Vinci Code revealed the Va Dinci Cod, not by Dan Brown, but by Don Brine. Not content with J.K. Rowling, Gerber also had a go at C.S. Lewis and lips tightly pursed wrote The Chronicles of Blarnia to mixed reviews.

COPYCAT: The spoof (top) and the real thing

Most of the authors are fairly successful in their more mainstream writing. Don Brine, aka Adam Roberts, is a science fiction writer in his own right. His daytime job is that of a don at London University where he teaches 19th-century literature. South African award winning humorist Darrel Bristow-Bovey wrote the successful I Moved Your Cheese much to the envy of fellow lampooners like Toby Clement who wrote Asti Spumante Code: A Parody (of Da Vinci Code) and wailed in a newspaper about the little money his book got compared to the bestselling original.

Most spoofs don’t make money, agrees Madhu M, head of the books category at Landmark chain in Chennai. “Publishers bring out these parodies to time them with new titles of these series to make a quick if limited buck during what is a lean season for other titles,” he says. Spoofs and parodies sold well when they were a novelty, around the time that the Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) film series came out in quick succession three years ago, he adds. “There is little original content but the LOTR spoofs did quite well. So did I Moved Your Cheese. A management title like Blank!, the spoof of Blink! also did reasonably well for us. But Chronicles of Blarnia was a big flop.”

Besides the obvious — publishers and authors trying to make some money —there is a traditional lampooning culture in the West. In 1969, Signet published Bored of the Rings, a short satirical work based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s famed series for The Harvard Lampoon, with a similar plot and plenty of gags and word play. Harry Potter lampoonist Gerber grew up on MAD Magazine and National Lampoon.

On his website, he explains why he thought of Barry. “I really liked Rowling’s books and had seen what awful crap that the American publishing business calls ‘parody’. I felt obligated to try to write a spoof worthy of the originals.”

Although parody is protected by US law, publishers rejected his manuscript fearing plagiarism and copyright issues. Gerber ended up publishing it himself as Barry Trotter and the Unauthorized Parody in 2001, but it actually hit gold when it was published in the UK with one word changed in the title. Barry Trotter and the Shameless Parody was a bestseller for six months thereafter.

Despite the fact that some spoofs hit the jackpot, and some sink, parodies have their share of die-hard fans. At the root of it, quite possibly, is the realisation that you can laugh at things that the world loves.

“At one time I Moved Your Cheese even outsold the original for a couple of months when it crossed 200,000 in the UK market. It did very well here too and over the years has sold about 50,000 copies in India,” says Gangadhar Jawahar, publisher, Dolphin, Mumbai, which distributes I moved and the Barry Trotter series. He points out that there have been special editions of I Moved for the Indian market with print runs of 5,000 at a time. “Barry Trotter is moving slowly but steadily. I get about 20 copies at a time and they sell out.” Worldwide, though, the series has sold some 700,000 copies.

But Madhu M. says Indian customers usually find very little original content in the spoofs. “Very few of those who buy the first spoof title will go back and buy the whole series,” he says. Jawahar contends that it’s a Net-worked and travelling reader who goes looking for these titles. “They hear about it and then they go and check out the bookstores.”

Yet Allwyn Pais, manager, Rupa & Co, Mumbai, stresses that, barring a few exceptions, spoofs fail to take off in India. “These books are not taken very seriously and they don’t do too well.”

Undoubtedly, the titles are funny. Who could resist The 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People: Low Effort Lessons in Mismanaging for Success; Stress in the Workplace and How to Cause It; Who Moved My Blackberry?; Eats, Shiites and Leaves; Bored of the Rings; The Chronicles of Blarnia: The Lying Bitch in the Wardrobe; Women are from Bras, Men are from Penus; The Naked Bachelor; Star Warped and The Matewix?

So is the content sometimes. Almost all of them have funny disclaimers and taglines. A reviewer had this to say about I Moved: “This is the self-help book for people who want to take no steps at all. Simply buying it and keeping it displayed in a prominent place will make you a better, happier, more desirable person.”

Clearly, spoofs are not without their fans. The FHSH (The Fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror) Book Review has praise for Bored of the Rings. And this is what it says about the third Barry Trotter book: “Perhaps Gerber’s greatest achievement is to take J.K. Rowling’s excellent grasp of teenage angst and then focus on the one aspect that she left out, the most important thing to a teenage boy... sex!”

Readers such as Deepthy Raghavendra, a management lecturer, praises spoofs which she says can touch upon a topic from an opposite approach. “To enjoy the parodies it is better to know the original work. Then one can appreciate the humour in the spoof,” laughs Raghavendra.

For college-going Vivek Tiwari, The Chronicles of Blarnia and the Barry Trotter series were far better time killers than the originals. I was so tired of the Harry Potter craze that it was a relief to find Ermine Cringer and Lou Measly. It is definitely more adult stuff and I enjoyed both Parody and Unnecessary Sequel. The Dead Horse was a bit of a bore. But yes, if there is another Barry Trotter in the offing, I will be sure to read it.”

As Harry prepares to make his final (or so Rowling says!) appearance, this time will it be Barry’s turn to say, “Copycat!”?