In Spanish, "sabor a hiel" means "taste of bitterness", and that is exactly the flavour acquired by a best-selling Spanish novel of that name. Within a few weeks of its publication, the book had sold more than 100,000 copies - a huge run for a Spanish novel. It has now been withdrawn from sale after the publishers, Planeta, received writs against its author accusing her of plagiarism. The lawyers allege that Sabor a Hiel bears more than a passing resemblance to a Danielle Steele novel, Family Album, published in Spain in 1997.
The incident has become the talking point at Spanish dinnertables and features prominently on magazine covers. Although this a first novel for the author, she is well known in Spain as a radio and television journalist.
Ana Rosa Quintana, a leading talk-show hostess whose afternoon programme, Sabor a Ti, attracts huge audiences, mostly women - and the latest scandal has sent the figures soaring - but her show is one of the few chat shows in which the controversy is hardly mentioned.
Sabor a Hiel was launched last April amid great media fanfare by Ana Botella, wife of the Spanish prime minister. Quintana described it as a story of marital strife which she hoped would draw attention to the topical subject of domestic violence, although readers found only passing mentions of marital violence in the book.
When the accusations first came to light, Quintana tried to shrug them off as "mere coincidences" and later to "my inexperience, a computer error and the failure of my researchers", but it seems more than a coincidence that some 24 pages of the 240page novel seem to have been lifted almost directly from the Spanish translation of the Steele novel, and it would take a fairly sophisticated computer programme to change English names to Spanish ones, and Los Angeles settings to Madrid.
Within days of Quintana being accused of lifting chunks of the Steele novel for her blockbuster, another observant reader thought she recognised the plot, and on checking discovered almost identical passages from Mujeres de Ojos Grandes by the Mexican writer Angeles Mastretta.
Before the scandal broke, Quintana had denied rumours in Madrid that she had used a ghost writer for much of the text. In her introduction to the novel she expressed her gratitude to "David Rojo, for the long hours we worked on this novel and for his meticulous investigation". Rojo is the brother of Quintana's ex-husband.
But now the writs are beginning to drop on to the desks of Planeta's lawyers (in addition to the one from Danielle Steele's publishers, Steele's translator has issued one and Mastretta has not discounted doing the same) it is convenient to put the blame on "a certain person from my immediate circle who has betrayed me".
Quintana is expected to be asked to return her £20,000 advance.
