Biblioasis International Translation Series

Transparent City
Ondjaki, translated by Stephen Henighan

Winner of the Portugal's José Saramango Prize
Nominated for the 2019 Best Translated Book Award
A Vanity Fair Hot Type Book for April 2018
A Vulture Must-Read Translated Book from the Past 5 Years
A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2018
A Lit Hub Favourite Book of the Year
A World Literature Today Notable Translation of 2018
Winner of the Transfruges Best African Novel Prize
Winner of the St. Malo World Literature Prize

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.

'The language immerses the reader in the novel's milieu, but also charts out unexpected dimensions.' — Vulture

'Ondjaki's prose pulses with life...shine(s) with an unexpected clarity.' — World Literature Today

'...darkly pretty...peppered with poetry...These disparate stories are woven into a beautiful narrative that touches on government corruption, the privatisation of water, the dangers of extracting oil for wealth, and the bastardisation of religion for profit...the novel reads like a love song to be a tortured, desperately messed-up city that is undergoing remarkable transformations.' — Publishers Weekly