Transparent City

Transparent City revolves around the lives of the characters living in a dilapidated Luandan apartment block, one distinguished by an inexplicable waterflow through the first floor hallway. Ondjaki's tale is a satire on city life and the corruption of seemingly every public servant we encounter - with the possible exception of the grave digger - and the story is also steeped in magical realism so I could never be quite exactly how I was supposed to interpret particular events. I loved the apartment block setting which reminded me of such novels as The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany and Kissing In Manhattan by David Schickler, while its particularly Angolan vibe made Transparent City feel like a unique novel.

Ondjaki's characters are mostly larger than life, yet utterly plausible at the same time so I could believe in their actions and motivations while still being swept into a surrealism which appealed strongly to me. I am a big fan of magical realism novels. I felt that Transparent City is more of a slice-of-life story than a linear narrative so, while some of the individual characters do experience a beginning-middle-end story arc, this wasn't the case for everyone so the whole book has a sense of timelessness to it. These people's lives will continue away from our scrutiny just as they did before we readers arrived, or if not these people exactly then other Angolans like them, other survivors of the war which shadows many of the pages and which, I understood, will haunt generations to come.

Ondjaki maintains a light, humorous touch throughout Transparent City which belies the seriousness of what his characters endure in their everyday lives. The city's imminent destruction as the result of the government's greed for oil revenues at any cost contrasts with more personal issues such as a grotesque untreated medical condition, widespread homelessness and a lack of basic facilities such as reliable water and electricity supplies. I was entertained by the idea of the rooftop cinema, for example, and Seashell Seller's bickering friendship with Blind Man. The way in which the building's residents pull together when needed is heartwarming, but the persistent undercurrent of corruption around them gave me the impression that however hard they tried, they might never be able to escape their circumstances.