Transparent City
Ondjaki, translated by Stephen Henighan
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, Odo-nato'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. (From Biblioasis)
Blind Man spoke towards the kid's hand, which was gripping his arm, the two of them terrified of standing still in case the tongues of flame bursting out of the floor in search of the Luanda sky engulfed them.
'if i knew how to explain the colour of the fire, elder, i'd be one of them poets that goes around babbling poems"
in a hypnotized voice, Seashell Seller moved where the heat pushed him and led Blind Man down more or less safe paths where the water gushing out of the burst pipes opened passageways for anybody who dared to move in the wind-lashed jungle of the blaze.
From Transparent City by Ondjaki ©2018. Published by Biblioasis.