Afonso Cruz is an award-winning Portuguese author and illustrator. Born in Figueira da Foz, Portugal, he has visited over sixty countries. He has studied at the Antonio Arroio Art School, the Lisbon Faculty of Visual Arts and the Institute for Visual Arts of Madeira. He is the author of a dozen books, which have garnered him the Camilo Castelo Branco Grand Prize, the European Union Prize for Literature, and the Portuguese Society for Authors Award in the Literature category. The Portuguese edition of Capital (Pato Logico, 2014) was awarded the 2014 Portuguese National Award for Illustration, and his recent picture book The Human Contradiction (Caminho, 2010) was selected for the IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) Honor List and was a 2011 Portuguese National Award for Illustration honor book. Afonso also has a monthly column, Parallax, in the arts newspaper Jornal de Letras, Artes e Ideias, and is an animated film director and member of the band The Soaked Lamb."