Valencia, 1955. Bruno falls into a trap set by the police at the Ruzafa cinema to arrest homosexuals under the law of social danger. His entry into prison at the age of eighteen, and the pressure of his family, will force him to make decisions that will mark the rest of his life. The violet is a graphic novel about the persecution suffered by homosexuals during Franco's regime in Spain, and the coexistence of the women who married them. A story that brings to light the concentration camps for homosexuals that the regime created and that historically are being forgotten. It is a unique and self-concluding work. Marina was nominated as the best Spanish cartoonist in the Heroes Comic Con Valencia 2019 for this work.

Antonio Santos Mercero, one of the two writers of the graphic novel EL VIOLETA, has won on Friday, October 15, the Planeta 2021 Award for the novel LA BESTIA, co-written with two other writers (Jorge Díaz and Agustín Martínez) under the pseudonym Carmen Mola.

The Planeta 2021 Prize was presented by King Felipe VI to the winners and is endowed with 1 million euros. It is currently the literary prize with the largest financial endowment in the world, above the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Antonio Santos Mercero is the author of four other novels: El final del hombre, La cuarta muerte, La vida desatenta and El caso de las japonesas muertas. He is also the scriptwriter of television series such as Hospital Central, Lobos and MIR.

This title is one of the few selected by the ICEX panel of experts for the U.S. and Brazilian markets. New Spanish Books is a project of the Spanish Foreign Trade Institute ICEX in cooperation with the Spanish publishers' association FGEE. It is intended to make it easier for publishers from the world to gain access to new books from Spain and to help them decide which titles are worth translating.

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