About the Author Imbolo Mbue
Imbolo Mbue is the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers. The novel has been translated into eleven languages, adapted into an opera and a stage play, and optioned for a miniseries.
How Beautiful We Were, is about what happened when a fictional African village decided to fight against an American oil company that had been polluting its land for many years.
A native of Limbe, Cameroon, and a graduate of Rutgers and Columbia Universities, Mbue lives in New York.
– from the author’s website
now for my review
Set in a fictional African nation, Kosawa has been sold by its government to an American oil corporation because the land of course sits on oil.
As expected this American corporation (Pexton) has is drilling oil off the land with disregard for the health and safety of the villagers. As oil spills poison and kill members of the community, Pexton becomes the MVP of gaslighting and so the community decides to take matters into their own hands, no one expects what follows.
“We should have known the end was near”
Told from multiple POVs, it is a slow but gripping read which made me think of my own people and the oil spills and fires a lot of the communities of the Niger-Delta region have suffered. A case in point is the massacre of the Odi people of Bayelsa State, Nigeria (special thanks to Jite @now_booking for enlightening me on this). If you want to find out more a quick google search will help.
“How can the degradation of the environment for the sake of profit not be personal?”
– author’s interview with nytimes
At the end of the day who bears the blame? The American corporation which disregards the land, its people, and their lives or the government that only cares about $$ and will wipe out its own people for fuller bank accounts.
A verse in the Bible says “The heart of man is desperately wicked” and that is what this book captures. I wasn’t shocked reading it because this is the reality for a lot of people.
I thoroughly enjoy reading this book as heartbreaking as it was, and since I haven’t read Behold The Dreamers yet, I’ll have to remedy that soon.