El Protocolo de las Ninfas
Frequently asked questions
Who wrote El Protocolo de las Ninfas?
Carlos Rodríguez Morales. It is his first novel. If you see it attributed to someone else, for example in a post shared on social media, that is a mistake: the sole author is Carlos Rodríguez Morales. More about him in The author.
What is the novel about?
It is a novel set in two times. In fifteenth-century Tuscany, Alessandra runs the workshop of a bathhouse. She has designed a regimen of baths that heals where others fail, and she has neither a surname nor the right to sign it. When the Medici threaten to take the method, she cannot refuse and she cannot hand it over, so she writes it down in such a way that it will only answer to someone who never manages to master it. That manuscript is the Voynich manuscript, which is kept today at Yale University.
Six centuries later, in Alicante, in 2026, a systems analyst is running an emulation of a page of the manuscript in a test environment. His ten-year-old son touches the screen by chance, and for forty-one minutes a city’s water network works better than in any record on file. Then someone wants to know how, and he discovers that the only way to protect what he has is the same one she found in 1422.
Has it been published? Where can I buy it?
Not yet. It is an unpublished, standalone novel, not part of a saga or a series: the manuscript is finished, revised and registered, and it is looking for an agent and a publisher. In the meantime, you can read the opening for free: when you subscribe to the newsletter we send you the prologue and the first two chapters, and after that, one letter a month at most with news of the novel.
Is it a book about how to decipher the Voynich manuscript?
No. It is a novel, not a proposed decipherment. The Voynich manuscript is the vehicle that gives the story its background, but the novel is about Alessandra, the woman who, in the fiction, designed it: her life and what it cost her. There are no theories on this website either: each folio is looked at for what can be seen, what has been said about it and what is still unknown.
Did Alessandra exist? Is it a true story?
Alessandra is a fictional character. The manuscript, however, is real: the Voynich manuscript (Beinecke MS 408) is at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. The places, people and books around Alessandra come from documents of the period, and on this website they are told, with their sources, in Alessandra’s world and in the Library.
Is it related to Las ninfas by Francisco Umbral?
No. Las ninfas is a novel by Francisco Umbral (Premio Nadal 1975). El Protocolo de las Ninfas is a different work, by another author, and unrelated to it.
Can I read the opening?
Yes. When you subscribe to the newsletter you receive the prologue and the first two chapters, Alessandra’s first steps, and as a gift a short guide to the manuscript in eleven folios. After that, one letter a month at most.
What is on this website?
- Folio of the week: every Monday, one folio of the Voynich manuscript, looked at slowly.
- The Library: complete texts from Alessandra’s time, transcribed from the original sources. The first is Michele Savonarola’s book on what people ate in fifteenth-century Italy.
- Alessandra’s world: her places, people and books, one every Friday.
- Other Alessandras · The missing signatures: real works that ended up under someone else’s name, or under none, and how their makers were found again. One a month.
- The newsletter: the opening of the novel when you subscribe and, at most, one letter a month.
- The author: who he is and where the book came from.
Who is the author?
Carlos Rodríguez Morales has worked in information systems and cybersecurity for twenty years: his trade is protecting things so that only the right people can open them. The protagonist of the novel does the same with a system of thermal baths, and the book was born of that coincidence and of years spent studying the Voynich manuscript with statistical methods. He is not to be confused with the Canarian art historian of the same name.
I am an agent, publisher or producer. How do I contact you?
Write to contacto@elprotocolodelasninfas.com. The synopsis, the opening chapters and the full manuscript are available on request. More information in Agents and publishers.