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This is a truly breathtaking book. It spans such vast timelines that you’d be forgiven for thinking – as I did – that it was the author’s debut: surely she’d spent her life plotting this novel, and the hopes and dreams of her multi-generational cast of characters? It turns out it’s been nestled firmly in her head for 17 years, delayed by the pandemic and the success of her debut, Behold the Dreamers . Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, protagonist Thula, her family and community are battling devastating pollution caused by an American oil company based nearby on the village’s ancestral land. How Beautiful We Were tackles huge, heart-wrenching themes of belonging, community, colonialism and capitalism, and the idea of taking action versus lying in wait. The company’s disregard for the locals’ health leaves you furious and ashamed, willing the villagers on as they seek justice and reparations for the damage done to their families and fields. Yet, when profits come firmly before people, can anything ever really change? Magnificent and unmissable. HOW BEAUTIFUL WE WERE BY IMBOLO MBUE
IMAGES How Beautiful We Were places the reader at the centre of an African community’s struggle against a powerful American company, wreaking havoc on lands their ancestors have long called home
“With profits before people, can anything ever change?”
BY MEGHA MAJUMDAR A BURNING
This sensational novel opens in India, where a terrorist attack has killed over a hundred people. Jivan, a Muslim girl living in the slums and one of the book’s three narrators, shares a video on Facebook in which a devastated woman questions the inaction of the local police, accusing them of watching the victims burn instead of rescuing them. An anonymous comment points out that the video could be fake, and the stab of conflict thrills Jivan. “Wasn’t this a kind of leisure dressed up as agitation?” she questions. No-one rallies to her video’s defence, and in the quiet of the night, Jivan adds an inflammatory comment about the government: “It’s a dangerous thing; a thing nobody like me should ever think, let alone write,” she says, offering it up to us, pleading for forgiveness – but it’s too late, and events have been set in motion. We switch to Lovely, a gorgeously charismatic narrator, who bumps us into the now, flirtatiously swinging her hips on the way to acting class, dreaming of becoming a film star. As clouds start to gather, we also meet Jivan’s gym teacher, a man frustrated by his lot in life and looking for more, at any cost.
The narrators retell stories from different perspectives – leading to questioning and doubting and pointing fingers – until the flames that Jivan sparked are whipped into a frenzy that no-one can control. As the saying goes: you might not be interested in politics, but as this book proves, politics is very much interested in you.
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