How Beautiful We Were
A Novel
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4.1 • 19 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This powerful novel highlights how vital—and tenuous—the connections between people and their natural surroundings can be. In the fictional African village of Kosawa, an oil company’s drilling operations are poisoning the water and killing children. The struggle to survive amidst the utter environmental degradation has made the people of Kosawa feel powerless, but a young girl named Thula is undeterred. Told through the eyes of Thula’s family, the second novel by Imbolo Mbue (author of Behold the Dreamers) is a hard-hitting drama about the victims of corporate greed. We loved Thula as a character, especially her rebellious spirit and voracious love of reading. Ultimately, How Beautiful We Were is a multigenerational story of family and community ties—and how those bonds can give us the power to do the seemingly impossible.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mbue follows up her PEN/Faulkner-winning Behold the Dreamers with a stirring, decades-spanning portrait of an African village striking back against environmental exploitation. In the 1980s in the fictional village of Kosawa, children are dying, poisoned by American oil company Pexton's leaking pipelines. One small act of sabotage a villager steals a couple of Pexton representatives' car keys spurs Kosawa's residents to kidnap their corrupt village headman and the two oilmen whose keys were stolen, and triggers a chain reaction of tiny revolutions that reverberate for generations through transatlantic radicalization and violence in Kosawa, told through the fortunes and failures of Thula Nangi and her family. Thula's father, Malabo Nangi, vanished in the capital petitioning for government intervention; her uncle Bongo is spurred to seek foreign aid after Malabo disappears; and Thula becomes a charismatic revolutionary. With a kaleidoscope of perspectives, Mbue lyrically charts a culture in the midst of change, and poses ethical questions about the resisters' complex set of motives. While a series of repeated reminiscences from various characters and explicit moral lessons stall the momentum, Mbue's portrayal of Kosawa's disintegration is nevertheless heartbreaking. This ruminative environmental justice elegy fills a broad canvas, but falls just short of being a masterpiece.
Customer Reviews
Good but heavy read
Great book for a book club, lots of talking point. But it’s a heavy read.