A woman won a million-euro Spanish literary prize. It turned out that ‘she’ was actually three men.

The enactment of 1 pistillate was, it turned out, the equivalent of the labors of 3 men.

That was astatine slightest the lawsuit for Spain’s apical writer of transgression thrillers, a prof and parent who wrote nether the pseudonym Carmen Mola, supposedly to support her anonymity.

But connected Friday night, astatine a ceremonial to grant the 1 cardinal euro ($1,160,000) Planeta literate prize to Mola for her humanities thriller “The Beast,” 3 men ascended the podium and claimed the grant instead.

Mola’s gripping, often-gory novels starring beardown pistillate protagonists person been likened to the enactment of Elena Ferrante, a pseudonym for a wide fashionable Italian writer.

Mola is champion known for a trilogy starring a “peculiar and solitary” pistillate constabulary inspector “who loves grappa, karaoke, classical cars and enactment successful SUVs,” according to steadfast Penguin Random House. That trilogy has been translated into 11 languages and is being adapted for television.

Last year, a subdivision of Spain’s Women’s Institute listed Mola’s “The Girl,” a portion of the trilogy, arsenic 1 of the must-read books and films by women that “help america recognize the world and the experiences of women.”

Mola’s latest work, “The Beast,” is simply a humanities thriller centered connected the execution of children successful Madrid during a cholera outbreak successful 1834.

Only the writers spinning these tales were truly Jorge Díaz, Agustín Martínez and Antonio Mercero — established Spanish tv scriptwriters successful their 40s and 50s.

“Carmen Mola is not, similar each the lies we’ve been telling, a assemblage professor,” Díaz said aft winning the Planeta prize, the Financial Times reported. “We are 3 friends who 1 time 4 years agone decided to harvester our endowment to archer a story.”

The trio person said they chose the sanction by accidental and for amusive — without paying immoderate peculiar thought to the sex of the sanction oregon the imaginable implications.

“I don’t cognize if a pistillate pseudonym would merchantability much than a antheral one, I don’t person the faintest idea, but I uncertainty it,” Mercero told Spain’s El País newspaper. “We didn’t fell down a woman, we hid down a name.”

“Quite isolated from utilizing a pistillate pseudonym, these guys person spent years doing interviews,” Beatriz Gimeno, a erstwhile caput of the Women’s Institute, wrote connected Twitter aft the award’s announcement. “It’s not conscionable the sanction — it’s the fake illustration that they’ve utilized to instrumentality successful readers and journalists. They are scammers.”

The writer leafage for Mola connected their agent’s website includes a black-and-white photograph of a slim pistillate with her backmost turned to the camera.

“It hasn’t escaped anyone’s announcement that the thought of a assemblage prof and parent of 3 who taught algebra classes successful the greeting past wrote ultraviolent, macabre novels successful scraps of escaped clip successful the day made for a large selling operation,” Spain’s El Mundo paper wrote successful an interrogation with the authors.

In the past, countless women person published nether antheral pseudonyms to support their privateness and circumvent commercialized and societal biases against pistillate writers.

In a further twist, “The Beast” was archetypal submitted for information for the prize nether a antithetic pseudonym; the authors past attributed the enactment to Mola. The prize is awarded to an unpublished manuscript, which, arsenic portion of the terms, indispensable beryllium produced by Planeta Group’s publishing house.

The publication is owed retired adjacent month, reportedly with Mola listed arsenic the author.