A young man arrives in Johannesburg from a village in northern Mozambique and is conscripted into one of the city's oldest organised crime syndicates. Joao Mucavinho soon learns who really runs this bad city: who controls the money, the "kwash," and the turn of the dice. But the city is on the brink of monumental changes; it is about to explode-and with it all the dreams, the lies, and the power of the old order. It is a time of violent death, of survival, and an opportunity that only comes once.

Bad City is an African noir novel and an exhaustive anatomy of crime in one of the world's youngest and most dangerous cities.