Afonso Cruz (Figueira da Foz, 1971) is a Portuguese multidisciplinary artist. As well as writing and illustrating, he is a director of animated films and a member of a roots band. He started his career as a fiction writer in 2008 with the novel The Flesh of God, and in the following decade he published The Encyclopedia of the World Story (Camilo Castelo Branco Grand Prize), The Books Which Devoured My Father (Maria Rosa Colaço Literary Prize), Kokoscha’s Doll – the novel for which Cruz was awarded the European Union Prize for Literature in 2012 –, The Painter under the Sink, Jesus Christ Drank Beer (Best Portuguese Novel of the Year by Time Out Lisbon magazine, and Best Novel of 2012 by the readers of the newspaper Público), Where Do Umbrellas End Up (Portuguese Society for Authors Award), Flowers (Fernando Namora Literary Prize), Not All Whales Fly, Let’s Buy a Poet, the ambitious non-fiction book Jalan Jalan: A Reading of the World, and the novel The Karenina Principle. After The Addiction to Books and Synopsis of Love and War, both published in 2021, the following year Cruz released his last work to date, the poetic fable The Flower and the Fish. His books have been translated worldwide.