How Beautiful We Were
Imbolo Mbue
Available as Paperback, eBook, Downloadable audio
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers comes a sweeping story about the collision of a small African village and an American oil company
A PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST
‘Sweeping and quietly devastating’ New York Times
‘A David and Goliath story for our times’ O, the Oprah Magazine
Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, this is the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean-up and financial reparations are made – and broken. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. But it will come at a steep price – one which generation after generation will have to pay.
How Beautiful We Were is a masterful exploration of what happens when the reckless drive for profit, coupled with the ghost of colonialism, comes up against one community’s determination to hold onto its ancestral land and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people’s freedom.
“Sweeping and quietly devastating … In Kosawa, Mbue has created a place and a people alive with emotional range … Profoundly affecting”
new York Times
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“The unforgettable story of a community on the wrong end of Western greed, How Beautiful We Were will enthral you, appal you and show you what is possible when a few people stand up and say “this is not right”. A masterful novel by a spellbinding writer engaged with the most urgent questions of our day”
David Ebershoff, New York Times Bestselling Author Of The Danish Girl
“Imbolo Mbue would be a formidable storyteller anywhere, in any language. It’s our good luck that she and her stories are American”
Jonathan Franzen
“A David and Goliath story for our times, a riveting tale of how people coming together to make change can topple even the fiercest, best-financed foe”
o, The Oprah Magazine
”How Beautiful We Were goes to the heart of one of the most urgent matters of the day. The highly suspenseful story of an African village’s struggle for survival and justice in the face of ruthless American corporate greed is written with remarkable acuity and compassion. Mbue has given us a book with the richness and power of a great contemporary fable, and a heroine for our time”
Sigrid Nunez, Author Of The Friend, Winner Of The National Book Award
Imbolo Mbue
Imbolo Mbue is the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. The novel has been translated into eleven languages, adapted into an opera and a stage play, and optioned for a miniseries. A native of Limbe, Cameroon, Mbue lives in New York.
imbolombue.com
Imbolo Mbue Has Been Working Toward This Moment
“I would think to myself, why do some people rise up and fight while others do nothing?” she said. “Are people justified in doing anything and everything possible for the sake of justice? How do we balance our desire to fight for change against our desire to protect the ones we love? These are questions the characters have to deal with. I do not have answers — I much prefer to ask questions.”
Imbolo Mbue discusses her new novel How Beautiful We Were in the New York Times.
New York Times