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.

The SO Very Literary Book Club meets on the 3rd Thursday of every month from 2:00-3:30 pm.  
For 2024, we will be taking a trip around the world with selections that take place in countries near and far.
Everyone is welcome.  Come join us for a year of passionate book discussions!

Registration is appreciated.

Please stay at home if you or any member of your family are sick. Thank you

We look forward to seeing you!  

2024 Titles:

1/18/24 - My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
2/15/24 - True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
3/21/24 - The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
4/18/24 - How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue
5/16/24 - Girl at War by Sara Novic
6/20/24 - How Iceland Changed the World by Egill Bjarnason
7/18/24 - Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
8/15/24 - Human Acts by Han Kang
9/19/24 - Empress of the Nile by Lynne Olson
10/17/24 - On the Trail of the Jackalope by Michael P. Branch (with the author in attendance)
11/21/24 - Alamut by Vladimir Bartol
12/19/24 - Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson