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USBBY Outstanding International Book List, 2025

“Miller-Lachmann does a remarkable job of making this rich piece accessible to an English-language readership. Ondjaki’s poetic prose draws an achingly potent picture of two young people reaching for each other during a sudden moment of possibility, while the white text on the black pages and Gonçalves’ rough, white-on-black illustrations help create an immersive experience. As the best art does, this collaboration makes a very specific story—two young people, one night—feel universal. A brilliantly elemental exploration of the light that darkness can bring.”

—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

“Arresting… The author’s spare storytelling focuses intensely on feelings and specific sensory experiences such as touch and limited sight. The reader is provided only enough visual information to ground them in the moment: a canopy of stars above a darkened skyline, the starlit silhouette of an owl in a tree, a vague interpretation of the eyes of the person the protagonist longs to kiss. Ondjaki’s prose is imbued with a touching sense of existential whimsy… This artful romanticism carries the characters through the darkness… in which they experience laughter, a light show, and at last, an end to their yearning.”

—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“An existential exploration of the heart… While the boy and girl discuss their pain and the cruelty of war, they rejoice in the little things the darkness has brought them: closeness, silence, time with nothing else to do and a determination to make this night together as beautiful as possible. With such a stunning representation of not only pain and conflict, but also the joy that is still able to make its way through, Our Beautiful Darkness is sure to leave readers considering, appreciating, and reflecting on the world around them.”

—BookPage, Starred Review

 

Our Beautiful Darkness: A Graphic Novel

Written by Ondjaki and Lyn Miller-Lachmann (Translator)
Illustrated by António Jorge Gonçalves
Published by Unruly/Enchanted Lion

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.

Primary ISBN: 9781592704101
Publication Date: September 2024
Available As: Hardcover, eBook
Young Adult, Graphic Novel, Age 12 or older

Community Represented:

Themes: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Setting: Angola (Luanda)

Character's Place in the Immigration Journey: Home Country

Book Creator(s) Connection to the Community Represented: Own Voices/Lived Experience

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