Imbolo Mbue
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 has been optioned for film. Her sophomore novel How Beautiful We Were was picked as a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times and Good Housekeeping, one to watch by Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and the Irish Independent and a most anticipated read by TIME, Goodreads and Bustle. Her short story ‘A Reversal’ was included in the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa edited by Margaret Busby. A native of Limbe, Cameroon and a graduate of Rutgers and Columbia universities, Imbolo Mbue lives in New York City.
imbolombue.com
Imbolo Mbue Has Been Working Toward This Moment
“I would think to myself, why do some people rise up and fight while others do nothing?” she said. “Are people justified in doing anything and everything possible for the sake of justice? How do we balance our desire to fight for change against our desire to protect the ones we love? These are questions the characters have to deal with. I do not have answers — I much prefer to ask questions.”
Imbolo Mbue discusses her new novel How Beautiful We Were in the New York Times.
New York Times