At first, Haley said "Roots" was not a novel but non-fiction. But when scholars looked into his facts, they found many of them were wrong. Today, scholars think that the griot, the African scholar who talked to Haley, made up parts of the story. They think Haley was guessing or imagining things as well. Later, Haley would also admit that he copied parts of his book from a 1967 book called "The African".