Join us as we celebrate the launch of Imbolo Mbue's new book How Beautiful We Were on Saturday March 13 at 4 p.m. Imbolo will be in conversation with Elisabeth Egan, an editor at the New York Times Book Review.

Author of the New York Times bestseller and award-winning Behold the Dreamers, Mbue’s second book is a sweeping, wrenching story about the collision of a small African village and an American oil company.

Told through the fortunes and failures of Thula Nangi and her family, 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 onto its ancestral land and a young woman’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the sake of her people’s freedom. “...a novel with the richness and power of a great contemporary fable, and a heroine for our time.”–Sigrid Nunez

Tickets cost $30 and include a copy of the book (value $28). The first 50 people to register will receive a signed copy of the book.  Tickets can be bought via our ticketing platform here.

Books can be picked up at Festival partner watchung booksellers in Montclair, or shipped to your home address (additional cost, select option when selecting ticket).

Imbolo Mbue is the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. The novel has been translated into eleven languages, adapted into an opera and a stage play, and optioned for a miniseries. A native of Limbe, Cameroon, and a graduate of Rutgers and Columbia Universities, Imbolo Mbue lives in New York City.

Elisabeth Egan is an editor at the New York Times Book Review and the author of A Window Opens. She lives in Montclair with her family.

This event is part of Succeed2gether’s Montclair Literary Festival's special series of author events, Global Voices taking place on March 20 and March 21, 2021, and featuring authors and poets from England, Scotland, Ireland, Korea, Iran, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, and Spain.  The fifth annual Montclair Literary Festival will take place on Saturday October 2, 2021, with a combination of live and online events.

See all of the talks by following us on Crowdcast here or visiting our website events page here.

Any proceeds from the festival benefit parent organization, Montclair-based non-profit Succeed2gether, which offers after-school one-on-one tutoring and enrichment classes with the aim of closing the education and opportunity gaps in Essex County, NJ. You can read more about Succeed2gether and the festival at www.succeed2gether.org.

The festival organizing committee wishes to thank event partners Montclair Public Library and Watchung Booksellers, and festival sponsors Rao's, West of Hudson Realty Group, Jill Williams (Ameriprise Financial), Ferguson Dental, the County of Essex, and community members.

Imbolo Mbue "How Beautiful We Were" with Elisabeth Egan