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How Beautiful We Were

A Novel

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How Beautiful We Were

Written by: Imbolo Mbue
Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi, Janina Edwards, Dion Graham, JD Jackson, Allyson Johnson, Lisa Renee Pitts
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A fearless young woman from a small African village starts a revolution against an American oil company in this sweeping, inspiring novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers.

ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, People • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, The Christian Science Monitor, Marie Claire, Ms. magazine, BookPage, Kirkus Reviews

“Mbue reaches for the moon and, by the novel’s end, has it firmly held in her hand.”—NPR

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. Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature Village Africa
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I completely enjoyed listening to this captivating story. The character development and different POVs are woven together beautifully.

Absolutely outstanding

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an oil company takes everything from a people, a people rise in resistance, an oil company take everything from a people....

it is difficult not to feel angry with the author as hope for salvation from the violent and all consuming forces of imperialism and environmental destruction are first cultivated and then slowly and systematically destroyed. but why should our anger be directed at the author when the story she has written, about a fictional village in a fictional country destroyed by a fictional oil company, has played out in exactly this way and ways even more horrifying in real villiages and countries all over the globe - a thousand Kosawas over and over and over again. who really deserves our anger and frustration? I wanted another story. I wanted fiction to deliver the salvation that this world denies us. But maybe we are not meant to find salvation in stories. maybe it is something we must create for ourselves.

Frustrating but real

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The writing was beautiful, it was unique to Imbolo Mbue. The story being told by different narrators painted a full picture but that’s not the beauty of the story. Fiction mirrored reality beautifully. Kosawa, although a fictional village told the story of many villages across Africa. Women and men that laid their lives down for the betterment of their people who have been swept away with the dust of their land. I wept.

Devastatingly Beautiful

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