Traces of Madness: A Graphic Memoir

I want to share my story to understand what is happening to me.

Fernando Balius was a perfectly ordinary, if misunderstood, young adult--until he started hearing voices.

In Traces of Madness, Fernando describes what it feels like, both mentally and physically, to lose your grip on reality. His life spins out of control when the voices he hears inside his head, depicted in the narrative as a monster, work to destroy his self-esteem and, worse, urge him to hurt himself. Various psychiatric diagnoses and prescribed medications do more harm than good, prompting Fernando to question whether stifling his voices is truly the right path for him. Throughout his experiences, he finds that his connections with others lend him the strength to survive.

Mario Pellejer’s moving illustrations bring Nando’s remarkable story to life. This raw and uniquely hopeful graphic memoir shows the power of community and understanding and encourages us all to 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.