Author(s): Imbolo Mbue

Novel | Africa

We should have known the end was near. So begins Imbolo Mbue's powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were.

Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made - and ignored. The country's government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests.

Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price.

Told from the perspective of a generation of children and the family of a girl named Thula who grows up to become a revolutionary, 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 on to its ancestral land and a young woman's willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people's freedom.  

Review: '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

'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

'The unforgettable story of a community on the wrong end of Western greed, How Beautiful We Were will enthrall you, appall 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 is a breathtaking talent' - Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train

Prizes: Short-listed for PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction 2022.

Author Biography: Imbolo Mbue is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Behold the Dreamers, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Blue Metropolis Words to Change Prize and was an Oprah's Book Club selection. Named a notable book of the year by the Observer, New York Times and the Washington Post and a best book of the year by close to a dozen publications, the novel has been translated into eleven languages, adapted into an opera and a stage play, and has been optioned for film. A native of Limbe, Cameroon and a graduate of Rutgers and Columbia universities, Imbolo Mbue lives in New York City.