Part I: Theoretical and Historical Groundwork
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Informal Urbanism and/as Representational Crisis
Chapter 3 Changing Paradigms in Urban Studies
Chapter 4 A New Generation of Urban Informalists
Chapter 5 Literary Mappings of the Informal City
Part II: Interdisciplinary Cross-readings
Chapter 6 Hybrid Urbanization and Literary Space: Paulo Lins's City of God and Naïma Tagemouati's La Liste
Chapter 7 Ordinary Cities I: Upward Mobility in Istanbul (Pamuk and Tekin)
Chapter 8 Memorializing People as Infrastructure in Abidjan and Dakar (Rouch, Sembène, Mambéty)
Chapter 9 Ordinary Cities II: Fables of Urban (Im)Mobility in Yaoundé and Lagos
Chapter 10 Climates of Uncertainty (Patterson, Chamoiseau, Saulter, and KSR)
Chapter 11 Summary and Closing Remarks (Soft Eyes)
Biography
Eric Prieto is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. He is the author of Literature, Geography, and the Postmodern Poetics of Place (2012) and co-editor of Urban Discourses of Crisis, Resilience, and Resistance (with Liam Lanigan and Anni Lappela; 2025).
