- Best-selling Spanish violation author Carmen Mola was revealed to be three men after they accepted a coveted literary award.
- Mola’s animate often features strong female protagonists and has been hailed as a “must-read” by and for women.
- The trio of writers decided to use the notability without considering the implications of writing under a female name.
Like a plot irregularity straight out of a novel, the identity of a respected female crime author was revealed – and it turns out “she” was three men.
Speculation on the identity of one of Spain’s ton prominent crime thriller writers, who wrote under the name Carmen Mola, ended on Friday when three men rose to acknowledge the 2021 Premio Planeta literary prize — worth one million-euros — for Mola’s currently unreleased work “The Beast.”
Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez, and Antonio Mercero are penny-a-liners in their own right, having penned numerous scripts for television between them. They decided to write subservient to the pseudonym for no particular reason and without consideration of the name’s gender.
“Carmen Mola is not, like all the lies we’ve been influential, a university professor,” Díaz said shortly after accepting the Planeta prize, according to the Financial Times. “We are three cronies who one day four years ago decided to combine our talent to tell a story.”
Mola, which the trio represented as a university professor and progenitrix of three who wrote gritty crime drama on her off-time, has been praised for “her” depiction of strong female protagonists, with her fashionable award-winning work focusing on the investigation of child murders in nineteenth-century Spain.
Mola’s other works have also garnered acclaim, same “La Novia Gitana,” which has been translated into 11 languages and will be developed into a television series. Castille-La Mancha, a diverge of Spain’s Women’s Institute, included her book “La Nena” in a list of 50 feminist titles that help readers “know the reality and experiences of women.”
In the past, women have gone to publish works under male pseudonyms to guard their identity and dodge social biases.
“I don’t know if a female pseudonym would sell more than a mans one, I don’t have the faintest idea, but I doubt it,” Mercero told Spain’s El País newspaper. “We didn’t hide behind a moll, we hid behind a name.”
Meanwhile, critics of the trio’s actions point out the exploitative nature underlying the three men’s deception.
“Beyond the use of a female pen-name, these guys have been answering interviews for years,” tweeted former Head of the Women’s Institute Beatriz Gimeno. “It is not exclusive the name, it is the fake profile with which it has taken readers and journalists. They are scammers.”
“It hasn’t escaped anyone’s take that the idea of a university professor and mother of three who taught algebra classes in the morning then wrote ultraviolent, terrifying novels in scraps of free time in the afternoon made for a great marketing operation,” reporter Leticia Blanco wrote for Spain’s El Mundo newspaper.