Behold the Dreamers
An Oprah’s Book Club pick
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4.2 • 51 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR
AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR
OPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK
A powerful and timely story of marriage, class, race and the pursuit of the American Dream. Behold the Dreamers is a dazzling debut novel about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – and of what we’re prepared to sacrifice to hold on to each of them.
‘We all do what we gotta do to become American, abi?’
New York, 2007: a city of dreamers and strivers, where the newly-arrived and the long-established jostle alike for a place on the ladder of success. And Jende Jonga, who has come from Cameroon, has just set his foot on the first rung.
Clark Edwards is a senior partner at Lehman Brothers bank. In need of a discrete and reliable chauffeur, he is too preoccupied to closely check the paperwork of his latest employee.
Jende’s new job draws him, his wife Neni and their young son into the privileged orbit of the city’s financial elite. And when Clark’s wife Cindy offers Neni work and takes her into her confidence, the couple begin to believe that the land of opportunity might finally be opening up for them.
But there are troubling cracks in their employers’ facades, and when the deep fault lines running beneath the financial world are exposed, the Edwards’ secrets threaten to spill out into the Jonga’s lives.
Faced with the loss of all they have worked for, each couple must decide how far they will go in pursuit of their dreams – and what they are prepared to sacrifice along the way.
‘There are no heroes in this marvellous debut, only nuanced human beings. A classic tale with a surprise ending, as deeply insightful as it is delightfully entertaining’ Taiye Selasi
‘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
‘Eerily timely … bittersweet and buoyant’ Jessie Burton, Observer Books of the Year
Reviews
‘There are no heroes in this marvellous debut, only nuanced human beings. A classic tale with a surprise ending, as deeply insightful as it is delightfully entertaining’ Taiye Selasi
‘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
‘Eerily timely … bittersweet and buoyant’ Jessie Burton, Observer Books of the Year
‘As a dissection of the American Dream, Imbolo Mbue’s first novel is savage and compassionate in all the right places’ New York Times
‘There’s an innovative focus to this warm-hearted and timely debut. Cleverly created by fielding more than once class of New York dreamer’ The Sunday Times
‘Mbue crafts a satire of unusual subtlety.’ Observer
The cultural and racial observations are fresh, interesting and never laboured‘ Irish Times
‘There are a lot of spinning plates and Mbue balances them skilfully, keeping everything in motion. Even more impressive is the vitality that gleams through the film of gloom as the story becomes less about the Jonga family from day to day than about their efforts to make peace with their fate, whatever and wherever that might be’ Scotland on Sunday
‘A debut novel that illuminates the immigrant experience in America with the tender-hearted wisdom so lacking in our political discourse . . . Mbue is a bright and captivating storyteller’ Washington Post
‘Mbue writes with great confidence and warmth . . . A capacious, big-hearted novel’ New York Times Book Review
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Behold the Dreamers is the powerful debut from Cameroon-born American writer Imbolo Mbue. Set before the 2008 financial crash, the novel provides a refreshingly sympathetic portrait of two marriages on either side of the widening American class divide. The Jongas—Jende and Neni—recently arrived from Cameroon, work for Lehman Brothers executive Clark Edwards and his wife, Cindy, who live among Manhattan’s one-percenters. Which marriage endures the recession? Mbue’s take will surprise you. Her vivid characters stuck with us far longer than it took to finish her deftly paced book.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
From Cameroonian Mbue comes a debut novel about two immigrants struggling to find their footing in a new world. When Jende Jonga journeys to New York City from Cameroon in 2004 on a visitors' visa in hopes of obtaining a green card, he's sure his life will only improve. After saving up enough money to bring over Jende's wife, Neni, and six-year-old son, the family moves into an apartment in Harlem. Then Jende hits the jackpot in 2007 when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a wealthy Lehman Brothers executive. But working for the Edwardses isn't as cushy and above board as Jende expected. Clark's long hours at the office and frequent late-night "appointments" at the Chelsea Hotel raise red flags with his wife, Cindy. When Neni agrees to accompany the Edwards family to Southampton as a temporary nanny for their youngest son, she learns far more than she bargained for about Cindy's fragile mental state. Before long, the pressure of keeping what they know about Clark and Cindy and the threat of deportation becomes too much for the Jongas to bear, threatening the stability of their marriage and their ability to remain in a country they still can't call home. Mbue's reliance on overheard phone conversations to forward the plot makes for choppy reading, and the tenor of the Edwardses' rich-people problems is nothing new. But the Jongas are much more vivid, and the book's unexpected ending and its sharp-eyed focus on issues of immigration, race, and class speak to a sad truth in today's cutthroat world: the American dream isn't what it seems.
