We should have known the end was near.
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..
Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price.
Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back.
The country\'s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interest.
Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made--and ignored.
Children are dying from drinking toxic water.
Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile.
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.
So begins Imbolo Mbue\'s devastating second novel, How Beautiful We Were.
We should have known the end was near
