Transparent City (2018)
Ondjaki, transl. from Portuguese by Stephen Henighan
rating okay
type fiction e-book
2021/01/26 Magical realism; some lovely & creative quotes
- "the time of remembering is finished tomorrow i’ll weep the things i should have wept today" (8)
- “they smell of the colour of the sea, those shells of yours” (37)
- "humanity is ugly—it wears the marks of its long suffering and has a fetid smell, but it endures because deep down humanity is good" (44)
- "“don’t be afraid,” Odonato said, “i’m turning transparent.”" (85)
- "«the difference between a guy who’s just smart and a guy who’s smart and clued-in» Paulo Paused thought, «is that the former has useless obsessions and talks about stuff he doesn’t understand and the latter chooses his obsessions and rarely speaks of what he’s already grasped..." (95)
- "in the end, what is a place full of humans who worry so little about others? what is a place full of cars containing solitary people trying to run down time and mistreat others in order to get home to greet their own solitariness? what is a place full of rumours and celebrations and burials with so much food, if no one can knock on a stranger’s door any more to ask for a glass of water or find a reason to take a break beneath the cool shade of a fig tree «this city is a desert» he thought as he walked" (102)
- "don’t forget, whoever decides the price of transporting water, decides the price of water...” (108)
- “the truth is even sadder, Baba: we’re not transparent because we don’t eat... we’re transparent because we’re poor.” (114)
- "from weapon to weapon, from shot to shot, from violent conversation to brutal description, the war remained on the loose—in every corner of Angola, at some moment, even if it were in the first flashes of the clearest morning light, someone would be willing to sacrifice his silence to speak, if only by implication, of a certain war, his own or his neighbour’s, that of his family or that of his stepson who came from a province that had suffered more, imbuing marriages, funerals, working hours, dances, the arts and even love, an almost innate ability to speak about that monstrous subject like someone who, smoothly and fearlessly, stroked the shoulder of a raging beast, tormented by a false peace masquerading as mere exhaustion" (116)
- "«the war» he said to himself, «is an eternally bleeding memory, and at some point you open your mouth or make a motion, and what comes out is the blood-red trail of things you didn’t know you knew» all Angolans, therefore, had some sort of paranoia about weapons or armaments, they all had a tale to tell or an episode to invent" (116)
- “we don’t always get what we want, that’s what life will teach you one day... at times we don’t get even the simplest things” (149)
- “this is my body, this is the sight of my pain,” (149)
- "cleanliness is the dignity of the poor" (154)
- "Luanda is a city of people who fantasize about anything they can imagine” (157)
- “and it’s like the rain: when it falls, everyone gets wet” (182)
- “"all the worlds get mixed up, pardon my poetic speech, but we’re all water from the same river” “minus those beyond the third bank, as the master Guimarães would say” “minus those beyond each individual’s bank,”" (223)
- “each Luandan is a creator of his own tale, just be careful you don’t pick up the habit” (224)
- “take it easy, sis... fire’s like wind, it shouts a lot but it has a tiny little voice.” (230)
- “if i knew how to explain the colour of the fire, elder, i’d be a poet” (233)