A Vanity Fair Hot Type Book for April 2018
A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2018
A Lit Hub Favourite Book of the Year
In a crumbling apartment block in the Angolan city of Luanda, families
work, laugh, scheme, and get by. In the middle of it all is the
melancholic Odonato, nostalgic for the country of his youth and
searching for his lost son. As his hope drains away and as the city
outside his doors changes beyond all recognition, Odonato's flesh
becomes transparent and his body increasingly weightless.
A captivating blend of magical realism, scathing political satire,
tender comedy, and literary experimentation, Transparent City offers a
gripping and joyful portrait of urban Africa quite unlike any before yet
published in English, and places Ondjaki, indisputably, among the
continent's most accomplished writers.