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 António Jorge Gonçalves.
Translated from Portuguese by Lyn Miller-Lachmann
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.
| ISBN: | 9781592704101 |
| Publication date: | 10th October 2024 |
| Author: | Ondjaki |
| Illustrator: | António Jorge Gonçalves |
| Publisher: | Unruly an imprint of Unruly/Enchanted Lion |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 126 pages |
| Genres: |
Graphic novel / Comic book / Manga: styles / traditions Romance / Relationship Stories Classic European style / tradition comic books |