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Woman who won €1m literary prize turns out to be three men

Spain’s model of Elena Ferrante has been revealed to be three middle-aged males.

Late on Friday night time the €1m Planeta prize — the world’s highest paying literary trophy — was awarded to Carmen Mola, an writer who till now has been offered as a female university professor who writes beneath a pen identify due to her need for anonymity.

Though Mola’s books are decidedly gory, the author has been publicised because the “Spanish Elena Ferrante” — a reference to the reclusive, and in addition pseudonymous, Italian literary novelist.

However when the principle prize on the Planeta awards ceremony was introduced within the presence of King Felipe VI in Barcelona, three individuals stepped as much as the rostrum — and none of them was a girl.

Neither Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez nor Antonio Mercero are lecturers, however in actual fact tv scriptwriters of their 40s and 50s who’ve labored on Spanish reveals similar to On Obligation Pharmacy, Central Hospital and No Heaven Without Breasts.

Their story may barely be extra totally different from previous examples similar to Mary Anne Evans, the nineteenth English writer who wrote as “George Eliot” to guard her privateness and keep away from being stereotyped as a feminine mild novelist.

“Carmen Mola shouldn’t be, like all of the lies we’ve been telling, a college professor,” mentioned Díaz on profitable the prize. “We’re three pals who at some point 4 years in the past determined to mix our expertise to inform a narrative.”

Martínez urged in an interview with Spain’s EFE information company that the authors selected to jot down beneath one identify as a result of “collective work shouldn’t be as valued in literature [as in] different arts similar to portray or music”.

On reflection Planeta tipped its hand to multiple particular person profitable the prize on Thursday, when it introduced the principle award could be elevated from €600,000 to €1m, so outstripping the Nobel Prize for literature, which at present trade charges is value simply over €100 much less, at 10m Swedish krona. Every of the authors will take away a 3rd of the €1m whole.

Carmen Mola is greatest recognized for a trilogy of violent novels starring police inspector Elena Blanco, a hard-charging police inspector with a passion for karaoke, grappa and informal intercourse. The books, published by Penguin Random House, have offered greater than 200,000 copies, been translated into 11 languages and are being adapted for television by Endemol Shine and ViacomCBS Worldwide Studios.

However the Carmen Mola guide that received the Planeta prize — beating 653 different contenders — is a historic thriller, The Beast, coping with the homicide of youngsters throughout a cholera epidemic in Madrid in 1834.

The prize can also be a means of securing and publicising works of fiction for Editorial Planeta, Penguin Random Home’s nice rival in Spain. The award is reserved for unpublished work, and the winner’s acceptance of Planeta’s publishing rights is a situation of entry. The situations additionally state that every one pseudonymous authors should embrace their particulars in a sealed envelope, which can solely be opened within the occasion that they win.

Within the case of Friday’s win, because the prize’s organisers mentioned, there was a “pseudonym behind a pseudonym”, since The Beast was submitted beneath the pen-name Sergio López, which was then revealed to be Carmen Mola, and subsequently unveiled as Díaz, Martínez and Mercero.

The guide is because of be printed by Planeta beneath Carmen Mola’s identify subsequent month, though Mola continues to be listed as a Penguin Random Home writer.

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