The Book of Denial

From award-winning Mexican author Ricardo Chávez Castañeda and the visionary Mexican designer Alejandro Magallanes comes a horror story and ghost story that is both daringly and beautifully told in word and image.

There are stories so terrible that we tremble to hear even a whisper of them. Even more terrible, some of them are true.This is one such story, a story of our deepest inhumanity--one that confronts the history of violence against children, and through its young narrator attempts to find a way out. A horror story and ghost story told as much through art as through text, The Book of Denial is an antidote to our collective silence. By uplifting storytelling as a means of understanding the past and shaping the future, it is also--improbably--a beacon of hope.

Written by genre-defying Mexican author Ricardo Chávez Castañeda, The Book of Denial is a dark and powerful story within a story, illustrated with a striking graphic sensibility by Alejandro Magallanes and translated by Lawrence Schimel.This is the third book to appear under Unruly, an imprint of picture books for older readers, and will include a short note to readers about how it continues to build this experimental framework of visually complex, sophisticated picture books for teens and adults.

Ricardo Chávez Castañeda was born in Mexico City in 1961. He studied Psychology at UNAM, but in the end he took up literary pursuits, dedicating himself, little by little, to writing and teaching. His work has garnered countless awards and accolades. He currently resides in the United States, where he is a professor of creative writing at Middlebury College, Vermont. In Mexico, he has published The Book of Denial and The Hill of the Dead, and other stories that tremble with fear.

Alejandro Magallanes was born in Mexico City, in 1971, and graduated from the National School of Plastic Arts of UNAM. In his work, he uses innumerable materials that are as versatile as his work, with which he has created a style that has earned him important awards in Mexico and abroad. His posters have been awarded prizes in many countries and have been exhibited in Poland, Japan, Canada, France, Holland, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Spain, Mexico and other countries. In addition to his extensive experience as a graphic designer and an illustrator, he is the author of books for children and young people.

Born in New York City in 1971, Lawrence Schimel has lived in Madrid since 1999. He writes in both Spanish and English, and has published over 100 titles as author or anthologist, in various genres and for all ages, including the poetry collection Desayuno en la cama; the graphic novel Vacaciones en Ibiza; and many children’s books, including ¡Vamos a ver a papá!, ¿Como se dice?, and Volando cometas. Una barba para dos (Spain, Dos Bigotes) is his first book of fiction for adults written in Spanish.
His picture book No hay nada como el original (Destino) was selected by the International Youth Library in Munich for the White Ravens in 2005, and his picture books ¿Lees un libro conmigo? (Panamericana) and Igual que ellos/Just Like Them (Ediciones del Viento) were selected by IBBY for Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities in 2007 and 2013 respectively. His other awards include the Lambda Literary Award, the Independent Publisher Book Award, and the Spectrum Award. His writing has been translated into over thirty languages, including Icelandic, Maltese, Estonian, and Turkish. In addition to his own writing, he works as a Spanish-English literary translator.