A Small Village Takes On Big Oil In 'How Beautiful We Were'

A madman commits one of the first acts of rebellion in Imbolo Mbue's vast second novel. In the village of Kosawa, a battle is raging: On one side, the citizens of this once-idyll. On the other, the mammoth oil company Pexton, which has, over generations, polluted the village's water and air and ground and, through its malfeasance, killed a growing number of its children. With smooth prose from a number of narrators among the villagers, tells the multi-generational saga of one small village's battle not just against one corporation and the dictator who profits from its avarice, but against neocolonialism itself. The novel's reach could have easily exceeded its grasp, given the weighty themes and its span, but Mbue reaches for the moon and, by the novel's end, has it firmly held in her hands.