How Beautiful We Were (Imbolo Mbue)

A PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST

'Sweeping and quietly devastating' New York Times
'A David and Goliath story for our times' O, the Oprah Magazine

Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, this is the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean-up and financial reparations are made - and broken. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. But it will come at a steep price - one which generation after generation will have to pay.

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 onto its ancestral land and a young woman's willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people's freedom.

Imbolo Mbue is the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was an Oprah's Book Club selection.

Her second novel, How Beautiful We Were, about a fictional African village's fight against an American oil company, was named by the New York Times as "One of the 10 Best Books" of 2021.

A native of Limbe, Cameroon, Mbue lives in New York.

imbolombue.com