How Beautiful We Were

How Beautiful We Were

Imbolo Mbue

#2814 of 8,085 books · #1288 in Fiction

Shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (2022).

How Beautiful We Were was a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist. 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.