Traces of Madness: A Graphic Memoir Fernando Balius 9781637790700

"I'm a grown man, but I don't feel it."

Fernando Balius was a perfectly ordinary, self-absorbed, and misunderstood teenager. But before he turned twenty, he started hearing voices. After a number of misdiagnoses, he was told he had schizophrenia.

In Traces of Madness, Balius describes in excruciating detail what it feels like, both mentally and physically, to lose your grip on reality. His life spins out of control as his auditory hallucinations, depicted in the narrative as a monster, work to destroy his self-esteem and, worse, try to convince him to hurt himself. After consulting with psychiatrists in the Spanish state medical system and taking medications that ultimately do him more harm than good, Balius educates himself about his illness and works to build a strong support network. Against the advice of his doctors, he realizes that listening to his voices, instead of trying to stifle them, is the most reliable resource he has for understanding what is happening to him. It's through his connections with others that he finds the strength to survive.

Mario Pellejer's moving illustrations help readers visualize Balius's mental state and piece together the fragments of his story. This uniquely hopeful graphic memoir reminds us that we all face inner demons of some kind, and it demonstrates how, by working together, we can push back in solidarity against the pervasive stigma surrounding mental illness.

Fernando Balius is a philosopher, an ex-office employee, and a contingent worker. He has taken part in various social movements over the last two decades, about the same amount of time that he has been considering the relationship between madness and society. His favorite place to think is on a bike and he has a fondness for the suburbs.

From a young age, Murcia native Mario Pellejer Ruiz surrounded himself with pencils and paintbrushes, eventually going on to study fine arts in Granada. He likes trees and yoga, and he is a postal worker. In 2017 he became a father of a daughter and hasn't stopped learning since. After some necessary experimentation, he realized that he wanted to tell stories with drawings, and so drawing became a window through which he could view the world and a means to share valuable experiences.