José Ovejero

The true story of the intriguing figure of Raymond Molinier, a secondary character in the history books who nonetheless played a major role in the great events of the 20th century. 

Una belleza terrible tells the true story of this elusive chameleon-like figure who made the workers’ struggle and his revolutionary ideals the driving force of his life. Raymond Molinier (1904-1994) was Leon Trotsky’s confidant during his travels through Europe after he was purged by Stalin and expelled from the USSR. Following the death of his mentor in Mexico, Molinier became a British secret agent and ended up in Argentina, where he fought in the shadows to ensure that the ideals of the workers’ revolution penetrated the Peronist bases.

In his odyssey, Molinier seduced various women whom he recruited to his cause, such as Jeanne Martin, a young woman from a bourgeois family whom he relegated to the role of a servant, and Elisabeth Kasemann, a German woman gifted with great skill in forging documents who would end up being tortured and murdered by the Argentine dictatorship.

It made no difference who or how: Molinier subordinated everything to the workers’ struggle and to survival itself, and he didn’t hesitate to use the most bizarre methods to get his way. As fascinating as it is enigmatic, his life is the material that the writers Edurne Portela and José Ovejero use to join forces in writing one of their most ambitious books. They themselves appear in its pages, where they share the challenges of telling a story full of secrets so lost in oblivion or in the folds of history that only fiction can bring them back to life.

“A writing that seems to arise from realism to find its true ferment in the imagination. That is, in freedom.”—La Vanguardia

“José Ovejero never disappoints.” —Agustín Fernández Mallo