From the celebrated author of the New York Times bestseller Behold
the Dreamers comes a sweeping, wrenching story about the
collision of a small African village and an American oil company.
“A novel 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
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.