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A blackout leads two teens to discover the intimacy and vulnerability that can only be shared in darkness in Our Beautiful Darkness, a fully illustrated YA novella from celebrated Angolan author Ondjaki and illustrator Ant?nio Jorge Gon?alves.

Translated from Portuguese by Lyn Miller-Lachmann

A Kirkus Best YA Book of 2024
A Five Books Best New Book for Teens of 2024

The light goes out suddenly. And in this absence of light, a pair of teenagers bare their souls. Into the warm silence of the night, they share a conversation filled with their stories and dreams... and maybe even a first kiss.

Set against the backdrop of the civil war that ravaged Angola in the 1990s, this book weaves the country's history with a teenage boy's family stories. But when a power outage shrouds the neighborhood in darkness, everyday realities fade away... As the boy and a girl sit talking in the backyard, memory gives way to imagination and vulnerability, and the space between them becomes charged with emotional electricity.

Their resulting conversation is both a meditation on the storytelling impulse and a gripping narrative of first love that, through its particulars, ascends to the universal.

About the Author

Ondjaki was born in Luanda, Angola in 1977. His novels, short stories, poetry, and children's books have received numerous prizes. He received the Jos? Saramago Prize and Litt?rature-Monde Prize for his novel Transparent City, which was translated into seven languages and included in best-book roundups by Vanity Fair, Vulture, Lit Hub, Globe and Mail, World Literature Today, and more.

Ant?nio Jorge Gon?alves is a Portuguese creator of graphic novels and picture books. A long-time political cartoonist for the Portuguese newspaper P?blico, he has also published in Courrier International and Le Monde. He created a live digital drawing technique with which he has performed onstage with musicians, actors, and dancers worldwide. He received Portugal's National Illustration Prize for Our Beautiful Darkness.

Lyn Miller-Lachmann translates children's books from Portuguese to English, including award-winning picture book The World in a Second and YA graphic novel Pardalita. She is the author of Torch, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for YA Literature, and co-author (with Zetta Elliott) of the middle grade verse novel Moonwalking.

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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

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.

About the Author

Ondjaki was born in Luanda, Angola in 1977. He is the author of five novels, four short-story collections, and numerous books of poems and stories for children. He has also made a documentary film, May Cherries Grow, about his native city. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

In 2008 Ondjaki was awarded the Grinzane for Africa Prize in the category of Best Young Writer. In 2012 The Guardian named him one of its \"Top Five African Writers.\" Transpar-ent City won the 2013 José Saramago Prize in Portugal, and, in France, the 2015 Prix Trans-fuge for Best African Novel and a 2016 Prix Littérature-Monde from the St. Malo World Literature Festival.

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About the Author
Ondjaki: Ondjaki was born in Angola in 1977. He studied sociology in Lisbon and attended film school in New York. He is the author of three novels and three short story collections, in addition to two collections of poems and a book for children. Ondjaki's novels and stories have been translated into English, French, Spanish, German and Italian. His novel The Whistler appeared in English from Aflame Books in the U.K. He lives in Luanda and has made a documentary film about his native city.
Stephen Henighan: Stephen Henighan's books include Lost Province: Adventures in a Moldovan Family, A Grave in the Air, The Streets of Winter and A Report on the Afterlife of Culture. A nominee for the Governor General of Canada's Literary Award, he teaches at the University of Guelph, Ontario.
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