How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

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.

Imbolo Mbue was born in the Cameroonian seaside town of Limbe. She has a bachelor's degree from Rutgers University and a master's degree from Columbia University. She has been a resident of the United States for over a decade and currently resides in New York City. Her critically praised debut novel, Behold the Dreamers, earned the 2017 PEN/Faulkner Prize for Fiction and was named one of the best books of 2016 by The New York Times and The Washington Post. NPR, Kirkus Reviews, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch all rated it a best book of 2016.

The Post-Dispatch is a newspaper based in St. Louis, Missouri. In 2017, the novel was also awarded the Blue Metropolis Words to Change Prize.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780593132449
ISBN 10	0593132440
Title	How Beautiful We Were
Author	Imbolo Mbue
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Random House USA Inc
Year published	2022-02-01
Number of pages	384
Prizes	Commended for PEN/Faulkner Award 2022
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.