The author of a best-selling Australian book about the honour killing of a Jordanian woman has admitted she fabricated parts of her supposed true-life story.

Norma Khouri’s “Forbidden Love” was pulled from bookshelves last month after a newspaper reported her story was fake.

“Forbidden Love” tells of Khouri’s friendship with a Muslim woman named Dalia. Khouri says she spent her youth in Jordan and ran a hair salon with Dalia, her best friend, when they were in their 20s.

Khouri says in her book she fled Jordan after Dalia’s father murdered his daughter for falling in love with a Christian man.

Khouri said she had made up parts of her book – by changing names, dates, locations and characterisations – to protect herself, her family and her friends. “I’m not saying I deny that I’ve lied. I’m saying that I apologise to all the readers, publishers and agents out there for not letting them know my personal full story,” Khouri told Australian television late on Tuesday.

“But I did not lie about Dalia’s existence or about her murder or about her life. I will never call that book fiction and I will never call that book a novel,” she said in comments widely replayed by Australian media yesterday.

Khouri has said in many interviews that she fled Jordan in fear for her life because of her account of how her friend Dalia was stabbed 12 times by her enraged father after he discovered Dalia’s love affair with a Christian soldier.

But The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported last month that it had evidence Khouri only lived in Jordan until she was three and lived in the United States from 1973 until 2000.