Paper short abstract:

Pepetela’s O desejo de Kianda and Ondjaki’s Os transparentes both describe “petro-magic”’s hold onto the Angolan capital Luanda. Through a poetic and animist exploration of the city, these novels announce the revenge of the more-than-human forces hidden in the Angolan subsoil.

Paper long abstract:

Written almost twenty years apart, Pepetela’s O desejo de Kianda and Ondjaki’s Os transparentes both describe “petro-magic”’s hold onto the Angolan capital Luanda. Through a poetic and animist exploration of the city, these novels announce the revenge of the more-than-human forces hidden in the Angolan subsoil. In Pepetela’s narrative, the “deep” rise up against the neocolonial order through the figure of Kianda, the water-spirit destroying the Kinaxixi buildings to free itself from its asphalt prison. In Ondjaki’s novel, on the other hand, devastating excavations are conducted to unearth the oil reserves hidden in Luanda’s subsoil, evoking a morbid process of neoliberal self-devoration taking place under the eyes of a defeated population. Despite their antinomic outcome, this article will argue that both books seek to uncover traces of popular solidarities, brought back through the lens of animist cosmologies and new possibility of interspecies coalitions.