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 the city outside his doors changes beyond all recognition, Odonato's flesh becomes transparent and his body increasingly weightless. Disparate stories are woven into the narrative, spanning from the tragic to the comic, from the surreal to the everyday. 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 among the continent's most accomplished writers.