How Beautiful We Were, Mbue - B+

            This semi-autobiographical novel is set in Cameroon in the 1980s in the fictional village of Kosawa, where people are dying because their land, and particularly their water, has been poisoned by Pexton, a US oil company. Our narrator is ten year old Thula, who lost her dad a year ago when he went, with five other men, to speak to their government about their plight, and was never heard from again. When the Pexton men come to talk to the villagers for their regular quarterly meeting to tell them everything is alright, the spontaneous action of the village madman, Konga, sets in motion a sequence of unforeseeable events. The villagers kidnap the three Pexton men and their driver. Nothing happens for weeks. The villagers hope the men would give them the names of the Pexton decision makers in the capital so the village elders could go and plead for help. The Pexton men refused. One of the men tells Bongo, Thula's uncle, that absolutely no one in the government, or at Pexton, cares one iota about he people in the village. Their only hope is to speak to his nephew, an American journalist named Austin. Bongo and three other leaders head to the capital. Austin listens to their story and tells them he will write it up and send it to the US. The oldest hostage, the one who had spoken to Bongo, soon dies, leaving the villagers with an absolute sense of dread.  Government soldiers come and kill a dozen villagers. The four men who had gone to the capital and spoken to Austin are arrested. Because their actions embarrassed the government, they were tried and summarily executed.

           Years later, a formal restoration of the village is long underway thanks to the efforts of Austin. A movement in America forced Pexton to pay the villagers for all of the damage they had inflicted on Kosawa. The water supply is somewhat safer, and the children are being educated. Austin has even obtained a scholarship for Thula to attend school in New York. Thula becomes radicalized in America, and suggests to her age mates back in the village that they need to take action against Pexton. Soon, sabotage is a problem for the oil company, and the villagers are warned that the consequences could be severe. Eventually, Pexton offers a settlement involving more payments and a less polluting operation and the young men stop their sabotage. Pexton does not deliver and its excuse is litigation with the Restoration Movement in America.  By now, Thula is their leader and she begins to ponder the role of not just Pexton, but their own government as well. In 1998, a twenty-eight year old Thula returns home after being away for a decade. She begins working as a teacher for the government in the capital. Six months later, she gives her five age mates money for rifles and she continues to speak of the possibilities of revolution. Years pass with no satisfaction for Kosawa.

       When one of Thula's age mates loses his only son, the four men decide they will wait no more. They take vengeance against three nearby oil workers. After they have killed a dozen, soldiers interrogated and raped throughout the region. Thula begins the revolution in November, 2004. She goes from village to village speaking to the people. She forms a political party and arranges for a new lawsuit against Pexton.  Thula is approaching forty when the lawyers tell her that an American court would do nothing about damages in a far off place - the matter is finished. The five age mates kidnap the local American oilman and hs wife and write ransom demands. The government soldiers come, burn the village and kill Thula and her colleagues. Pexton drills where the village had been, and provides scholarships for all of the children of Kosawa. Those who were raised there in the old way tell stories to their grandchildren.

      This novel was one of the Times top ten for 2021. It is a very powerful telling of the way people in Africa once lived, and how modernity (and in this instance greed)  has drastically changed that world.