
How Beautiful We Were
A Novel
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By:
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Imbolo Mbue
About this listen
A fearless young woman from a small African village starts a revolution against an American oil company in this sweeping, inspiring novel from the New York Times best-selling author of Behold the Dreamers.
One of the 10 Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, People • One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, The Christian Science Monitor, Marie Claire, Ms. magazine, BookPage, Kirkus Reviews
“Mbue reaches for the moon and, by the novel’s end, has it firmly held in her hand.” (NPR)
We should have known the end was near. So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. 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. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made - and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price.
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.
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Critic reviews
"Sweeping and quietly devastating...How Beautiful We Were charts the ways repression, be it at the hands of a government or a corporation or a society, can turn the most basic human needs into radical and radicalizing acts.... Profoundly affecting." (The New York Times Book Review)
"What a stunningly beautiful writer Mbue is, and how lucky we are to have her stories in the world." (USA Today)
“It’s a heartbreaking and relevant story that seeps into your bones, quickly engulfs you and doesn’t let go.” (The Seattle Times)
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- A Novel
- By: Jenny Offill
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 3 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a vantage point from which to practice her other calling: she is a fake shrink. For years, she has tended to her God-haunted mother and her recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment, but Lizzie has little chance to spend her new free time with husband and son before her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, makes a proposal. She's become famous for her prescient podcast, Hell and High Water, and wants to hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives.
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Read This Article Before Listening to Weather
- By MOR Denver on 04-28-20
By: Jenny Offill
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The Bear
- By: Andrew Krivak
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 4 hrs
- Unabridged
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A girl and her father live close to the land in the shadow of a lone mountain. They possess a few remnants of civilization: some books, a pane of glass, a set of flint and steel, a comb. The father teaches the girl how to fish and hunt, the secrets of the seasons and the stars. He is preparing her for an adulthood in harmony with nature, for they are the last of humankind. But when the girl finds herself alone in an unknown landscape, it is a bear that will lead her back home through a vast wilderness that offers the greatest lessons of all, if she can only learn to listen.
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Interconnectedness of all life
- By Sherrie Brownell on 07-18-20
By: Andrew Krivak
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Behold the Dreamers
- A Novel
- By: Imbolo Mbue
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, has come to the United States to provide a better life for himself; his wife, Neni; and their six-year-old son. In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark demands punctuality, discretion, and loyalty - and Jende is eager to please. Clark's wife, Cindy, even offers Neni temporary work at the Edwardses' summer home in the Hamptons.
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Overhyped
- By Rochelle on 08-27-16
By: Imbolo Mbue
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Girl A
- A Novel
- By: Abigail Dean
- Narrated by: Ell Potter
- Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Lex Gracie doesn't want to think about her family. She doesn't want to think about growing up in her parents' House of Horrors. And she doesn't want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped, the eldest sister who freed her older brother and four younger siblings. It's been easy enough to avoid her parents - her father never made it out of the House of Horrors he created, and her mother spent the rest of her life behind bars. But when her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can't run from her past any longer.
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Disappointing...
- By kendra l kramer on 02-09-21
By: Abigail Dean
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High School
- By: Tegan Quin, Sara Quin
- Narrated by: Tegan Quin, Sara Quin
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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High School is the revelatory and unique coming-of-age story of Sara and Tegan Quin, identical twins from Calgary, Alberta, who grew up at the height of grunge and rave culture in the '90s, well before they became the celebrated musicians and global LGBTQ icons we know today. While grappling with their identity and sexuality, often alone, they also faced academic meltdown, their parents’ divorce, and the looming pressure of what might come after high school. This is the origin story of Tegan and Sara.
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I'm such a big fan.
- By Andrew J Montano on 09-26-19
By: Tegan Quin, and others
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American War
- A Novel
- By: Omar El Akkad
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, that unmanned drones fill the sky. And when her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she quickly begins to be shaped by her particular time and place until, finally, through the influence of a mysterious functionary, she is turned into a deadly instrument of war.
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Best listen in years
- By odin on 04-08-17
By: Omar El Akkad
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The Paris Deception
- By: Bryn Turnbull
- Narrated by: Mary Jane Wells
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Sophie Dix fled Stuttgart with her brother as the Nazi regime gained power in Germany. Now, with her brother gone and her adopted home city of Paris conquered by the Reich, Sophie reluctantly accepts a position restoring damaged art at the Jeu de Paume museum under the supervision of the ERR—a German art commission using the museum as a repository for art they’ve looted from Jewish families.
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Fascinating Page Turner with Heart
- By Syd Young on 06-03-23
By: Bryn Turnbull
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The Ancients
- A Novel
- By: John Larison
- Narrated by: Dani Martineck
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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A young boy and his older sisters find themselves suddenly and utterly alone, orphaned in an abandoned fishing village. Their food supplies dwindling, they set out across a breathtaking yet treacherous wilderness in search of the last of their people. Down the coast, raiders deliver the children's mother, along with the rest of their human cargo, to the last port city of a waning empire. Determined to reunite with her family, she plots her escape—while her fellow captives plan open revolt.
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Sociological SF — imaginative and deeply intelligent
- By AlishaKJ on 10-26-24
By: John Larison
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The School of Mirrors
- A Novel
- By: Eva Stachniak
- Narrated by: Ell Potter
- Length: 16 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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During the reign of Louis XV, impoverished but lovely teenage girls from all over France are sent to a discreet villa in the town of Versailles. Overseen by the King’s favorite mistress, Madame de Pompadour, they will be trained as potential courtesans for the King. When the time is right, each girl is smuggled into the palace of Versailles, with its legendary Hall of Mirrors.
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Fascinating but pedophilia nonetheless.
- By Barbara W. on 05-10-22
By: Eva Stachniak
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Arboreality
- By: Rebecca Campbell
- Narrated by: Cynthia Farrell
- Length: 4 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Campbell's astonishing vision pulls the echoing effects of small acts and intimate moments through this multi-generational and interconnected story of how a West coast community survives the ravages of climate change.
By: Rebecca Campbell
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The Light Pirate
- By: Lily Brooks-Dalton
- Narrated by: Rosemary Benson
- Length: 11 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker, his pregnant wife, Frida, and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of his children. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm.
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Listed under "action adventure"????
- By NMwritergal on 12-14-22
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The Buddha in the Attic
- By: Julie Otsuka
- Narrated by: Samantha Quan, Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 3 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In eight incantatory sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the extraordinary lives of young Japanese brides, from their arduous journey by boat, where they exchange photographs of their husbands, imagining uncertain futures in an unknown land; to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the fields and scrubbing the floors of white women; to their struggles to master a new language and a new culture; to their experiences in childbirth, and then as mothers....
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Fascinating topic, irritating writing style
- By Lydia on 08-26-11
By: Julie Otsuka
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The Call of the Wrens
- By: Jenni L Walsh
- Narrated by: Fiona Hardingham, Amanda Sanfilippo
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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An orphan who spent her youth without a true home, Marion Hoxton found in the Great War something other than destruction. She discovered a chance to belong. As a member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service—the Wrens—Marion gained sisters. She found purpose in her work as a motorcycle dispatch rider assigned to train and deliver carrier pigeons to the front line. And despite the constant threat of danger, she and her childhood friend Eddie began to dream of a future together. Until the battle that changed everything.
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Loved it!
- By Katteann on 06-03-23
By: Jenni L Walsh
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How High We Go in the Dark
- A Novel
- By: Sequoia Nagamatsu
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan, Brian Nishii, Keisuke Hoashi, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus. Once unleashed, the Arctic plague will reshape life on Earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy.
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Should come with a sadness warning
- By KJH on 03-16-22
Beautiful story, beautiful narration
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4.5 stars
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Great story, very moving!
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This is a must have for your library
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Narration, use of metaphors
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I also began a real journey of building and implementing sustainable medical systems in clinics in underserved communities. Most of that work took place in eight countries in Africa, from Benin and Uganda to Mozambique and Lesotho from 2009 to today. This story is fiction, but it is true. The people are fiction but are real. The government stealing a country’s mineral wealth is real.
Not everywhere. I served in many clinics that were military where no one got rich, the people received the best HIV care possible, at little or no cost.
But in The Children; I can only see the seeds of American Revolution. The anger that builds from foreign strength robbing a people of clean water and health.
The ties to issues in America with American Indians are so true. My company’s next target is the Canadien Arctic. To see if we can use what we built in Africa to prevent some of the issue of Kosawa happening to the Inuits and Dene when mining, drilling, and construction opens up. I can only hope. And dream.
But I have better resources than Austin. So in my 70s, yes I still have the strength to have anger, even with losing teeth :). My business partner wants her dream to be Thula’s dream. I hope we win this time. It might not save the globe, but it might save the Arctic peoples.
A beautiful story, akin to the birth of America, but today
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Heartbreaking
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The narration whewww!! MEH! if the writing is excellent but the narration suffers, the story suffers! this novel should be narrated by perhaps more African people or just people with non-American accents or Americans with solid acting skills! The narrators are excellent readers but the monotone, pitch, intonation and inflection really impact the audible version of the novel! If you can imagine a professor giving a lecture with no change in inflection, it would be very hard to get though a 2 hr class…that was this audible book.
excellent writing and novel! narration whewwww
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Good but not great.
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A great novel
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