“Cities are replete with broken mirrors, intimate detachments, lines drawn and vanished. They demand a cartography of seemingly incongruous sensibilities where only the navigator pursuing haunted landscapes and the shifting arrangements of bodies and materials is able to make their way, and António Tomás clears a path for us all. For to both be a part of whatever passes for the city and apart from it at the same time is the defining conundrum of urban history.” - AbdouMaliq Simone, author of The Surrounds: Urban Life Within and Beyond Capture
“António Tomás has given us a book that examines core questions in urbanism but approaches them ‘sideways.’ He is less interested in defining what a city is than how it emerges from the myriad interactions of ordinary people. To do this, Tomás raids core ideas in classical and contemporary urbanism to fashion a new way of thinking and representing a city. Relentlessly inventive, consistently provocative, this is a book to pay attention to.” - Brian Larkin, Professor of Anthropology, Barnard College, Columbia University
"Tomás's analysis is a generous mélange of ethnographic and historical study of Luanda's changing urban condition over time, offering palimpsests of a changing city. . . . [The Skin of the City] is at its best when it focuses on the interconnections between various urban processes, inscribed locally, as well as the borders that enable such urban remaking." - Shakirah E. Hudani, Journal of Planning History
"[Tomas] successfully builds on his multifarious, complex relation to the city, as a native, an exile, and a researcher, in order to pursue a 'sideways' or 'lateral gaze' (p. 15) that builds a rewardingly deep story of the city." - Ruy Blanes, Journal of Anthropological Research
"A very readable introduction to the city—and one that both draws the reader into an engaged understanding as well as providing plentiful material for further study. . . . [T]he book is highly recommended for emerging generations of urban scholars interested in not only the south and especially Sub-Saharan Africa, but also wider urban space and form, and ongoing dynamic urban transformations worldwide." - Paul Jenkins, Journal of Southern African Studies
"Deploying the kind of deeply transdisciplinary imagination necessary for urban studies, António Tomás writes from the city he grew up in to help us all develop new 'skins' for conceptualizing cities in the twenty-first century." - Ricardo Cardoso, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography
"Tomás’s book is an engaging and exhaustive study of the history, politics, economy, and culture of a constantly changing and unpredictable African capital city. In this sense, it will undoubtedly become a reference for researchers interested in urban studies, history, anthropology, and similar disciplines." - Melusi Nkomo, Exertions
"In the Skin of the City is a finely crafted book about the political economy of one of the biggest cities in the Global South, which speaks to urban, social, and political theory. It builds on thorough research, engages its audience with a compelling narrative, and is a must-read for anyone who has an interest in Luanda, Angola, and urban Africa more generally." - Till Förster, American Ethnologist
"Tomás has created a compelling work that combines sociology, architectural theory, and history. Sociologists, historians, and anthropologists interested in urbanization and students of modern Angolan history should consider this work essential reading as it reframes scholarly approaches to the cities of the Global South." - Cathy Skidmore-Hess, Journal of Global South Studies
"[Tomás's] writing, with its anthropological, historical, geographical and architectural dimensions, exudes the Luanda of his childhood and adult life, but this enhances, rather than detracts from, the rigour and acuity demonstrated in the book." - Gilson Lázaro, Journal of Southern African Studies
