Best books...chosen by Imbolo Mbue
Imbolo Mbue’s new novel, How Beautiful We Were, chronicles a village’s fight against
deadly pollution. Below, the award-winning author of Behold the Dreamers touts
six other books whose dramas unfold through the eyes of African children.The Book List^ ARTS 23
The White Man of God by Kenjo Jumbam
(1980). A classic in my native Cameroon, this
novel explores a community attempting to blend
its indigenous ways with the Christianity thrust
upon it by European missionaries. The innocence
of its young narrator, Tansa, gives the book its
heart and comic flair.The Dragons, the Giant, the Women by
Wayétu Moore (2020). Many in the West associ-
ate Africa with war and autocrats. There’s cer-
tainly quite a bit of that, but there’s also so much
more, and Moore shows us that in her memoir
about her family’s escape from Liberia in the
midst of a civil war. Her work is a testament to
the fact that wars come and go but love remains.The African Child by Camara Laye (1953).
A novel from Francophone Africa, this is a book
I remember reading when I was a little girl and
hadn’t yet realized that writers were ordinary
folks. Guinean native Camara Laye describes in
gentle prose his family, his culture, his commu-
nity, his religion, all of which coalesce into a clear
picture of one African childhood.Small Country by Gaël Faye (2016). Another
novel from Francophone Africa, this one should
be required reading for all adults who have for-
gotten what it’s like to be a child. The genocides
that crippled Rwanda and Burundi in the mid-
1990s may be at the center of this story, but from
heartbreak Gaël Faye crafted a love song to care-
free childhoods and home and country and all
that is lost when we forget what matters most.We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo
(2013). Stories of children growing up in harsh
circumstances abound. What sets Bulawayo’s
apart is its starkness. The novel follows Darling,
a Zimbabwean girl who spends her time roaming
with her friends in a place devastated by poverty.
She eventually gets an opportunity to move to
America, where a new set of struggles awaits.The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma (2015).
As elegant as it is unforgettable, Obioma’s debut
novel tells the story of four young Nigerian
brothers whose chance meeting with a madman
leaves them with a prophecy that will haunt their
lives and forever change their family.Also of interest...in treacherous locales
Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende delights in defy-
ing stereotypes, said Fiona
Sturges in TheGuardian.com.
A feminist practically from the
crib, the celebrated Chilean-
American novelist launched
her writing career in the 1960s
by co- founding a feminist
mag a zine in
fiercely patri-
archal Chile
and contribut-
ing a cheeky
column called
“Civilize Your
Tr oglo d y te .”
She has since
written many novels that
include men who might be
Prince Charming, except that
every time she invents such a
character, she says, “I kill him
somewhere around page 112,
because I find I can’t stand
the guy.” At 78, she has been
luckier with love herself, mar-
rying for a third time in 2019.
“I separated from my [previ-
ous] husband when I was 72,
and everyone said, ‘Are you
crazy?’” she says. “I’ve never
been scared of being alone,
because I am self-sufficient.
But then Roger appeared in
my life. He is a profoundly
decent and kind man, and you
don’t find them so often.”
Allende’s new memoir, The
Soul of a Woman, charts
how she arrived at and lives
her own brand of feminism,
said Barbara Lane in the San
Francisco Chronicle. Even
now, she puts on full makeup
and dresses in heels to write
each day in the attic of her Bay
Area home. “Women’s eman-
cipation,” she writes, “is not
incompatible with femininity.”
She remains capable of evolu-
tion, though. When her three
grandchildren, who identify
as nonbinary, introduce her
to friends, she always asks
them about their preferred
pronouns. She accepts that
the push for change continues,
yet always seeks the joy in
the struggle. “This is a long
haul,” she says. “We have to
do it joyfully, and dance and
sing and eat and drink and
celebrate.”Author of the week
Kir
iko
Sa
no
,^ L
ori
Ba
rra
“The heroines of The Four Winds are
purely heroic, its villains wholly evil,”
said Ron Charles in The Washington
Post. But anyone who’s OK with melo-
drama should be moved by Kristin
Hannah’s No. 1 best-seller about a
woman who escapes Dust Bowl Texas only to
find California equally cruel. Hannah’s prose, “so
ordinary line by line,” nevertheless “accumulates
into scenes that rush from one emergency to the
next— starving! beating! flooding!—pausing only
for respites of sentimentality.”The Four Winds
by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin’s, $29)
Sarah Langan’s new dark satire is
“one of the creepiest, most unnerv-
ing deconstructions of American
suburbia I’ve ever read,” said Gabino
Iglesias in NPR.org. A manicured
Long Island suburb is so shaken by
the arrival of a lower-class family that when a
sinkhole opens up and the daughter of the local
queen bee falls in, the urge to blame the outsid-
ers turns murderous. “You will read this and be
enthralled, but you will never look at your neigh-
bors the same way again.”Good Neighbors
by Sarah Langan (Atria, $27)This best-selling novel “certainly
has an eerie, cinematic appeal,” said
VanityFair.com. In a former sanato-
rium in the Alps that has been con-
verted into a luxury hotel, a detective
on leave arrives amid a snowstorm
to celebrate her brother’s engagement. But when
disappearances begin and no help can reach the
property, our heroine must take up the hunt. The
story’s clichéd elements “could test the patience
of some readers,” but Sarah Pearse’s suspenseful
debut is “crying out for a screen adaptation.”The Sanatorium
by Sarah Pearse (Pamela Dorman, $27)
Roberto Bolaño left behind a trove of
amazing unpublished work, but it’s
becoming hard to ignore “the bootleg
feel” of the most recent unearthings,
said Garth Risk Hallberg in The New
York Times. This set of three novel-
las by the Chilean master is a mixed bag that
ends in a “hot mess” of fragmented material he’s
handled better elsewhere. “The gem here is the
title piece,” a story of Bolaño’s alter ego that cli-
maxes in a quixotic trip to join the anti- Pinochet
resistance.Cowboy Graves
by Roberto Bolaño (Penguin, $24)