Book Review: How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

´How glorious it felt to be powerful´.

´No one has the right to take from us that which the Spirit gave our ancestors´.

How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue is a novel of a rare complexity both in terms of topics and on the characters and narrative constructions. The book is very different in terms of approach and tone - and sense of humour - from Behold the Dreamers but it´s unique and complex on topics that are becoming more and more embraced by the literary realm: ecological disaster, abusive exploitation of resources, the mixture between colonial money and local corruption. Such topics are becoming more and more featured in literature those days, as the urgency of taking appropriate measures at political and social level are required. 

The action is taking place in a fictional African village set in a fictional African country led by ´His Excellency´. The Americans and the European Masters are dealing with him - a former military, with a leopard hat one of the many Mobutus of the continent, sharing the profits, while in the local settlements affected by the company plans children are dying, and the air and the waters are polluted. First it was the rubber, now it is the oil, always a curse of the resources, an occurence within Africa - but not only - take, for instance, the case of some Latin American countries as well, such as Venezuela. The individual names of the characters - Nubia, Lusaka, Tunis, Konga - reverberates specific geographies and political entities.

The dystopian feature of the location where most of the book is placed is symbolic for the overall situation of Africa. It is ´that´ Africa that the ´white man´ is considering at a very general level because more than the resources and their distribution, it does not matter too much. The only country mentioned is America, as a source of both evil and inspiration - particularly for further revolutionary actions to be pursued for gaining the freedom. 

The story is told through collective - ´the children´ - or individual voices of the villagers. Thus, one may find out not only about the fate of different characters, but also about the events unfolding within a timeframe from 1988 until 2020. From the beginning until the end, there is a story of a failure. Some may dream of revolution and even partially plan it, but the local conjectures, the human weaknesses and the improbability of winning against an impressive ´imperial´ structure do not allow it otherwise. In the end, the village itself will be destroyed, as it was not enough to have its children killed by the poison they were drinking and breathing. The dissapearance is official and irreversible.

Lost generations, lost chances, erased future. In the end, all goes in ´the land beyond´. The aims were violent, indeed, but they only brought more violence. The anger remains, the failure persists.

For me, it was a very long read, that took me a couple of good months to finish. I needed to think about the details, to understand the prose and connect with possible realities. Now, as I am finally done, I feel ready to continue my investigation into the literary interpretations and insertion of such urgent contemporary topics. 

The social and political critique in How Beautiful We Were is poignant. The fictional tools are used creatively to create a story with an inner pace of an old times epos. This is how the memories are saved, through stories, elegiac remainders. 

Rating: 4.5 stars