-
How Beautiful We Were
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi, Janina Edwards, Dion Graham, JD Jackson, Allyson Johnson, Lisa Renee Pitts
- Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $35.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
- An Oprah’s Book Club Novel
- By: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton, Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 29 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’ words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans - the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers - Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders.
-
-
The Great American Novel is finally inclusive.
- By Margaret on 12-28-21
-
Behold the Dreamers (Oprah's Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Imbolo Mbue
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, has come to the United States to provide a better life for himself; his wife, Neni; and their six-year-old son. In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark demands punctuality, discretion, and loyalty - and Jende is eager to please. Clark's wife, Cindy, even offers Neni temporary work at the Edwardses' summer home in the Hamptons.
-
-
Beautifully written and beautifully read
- By Barbara Dumas on 02-17-18
By: Imbolo Mbue
-
The Night Watchman
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, DC, this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Melanie on 03-09-20
By: Louise Erdrich
-
When We Cease to Understand the World
- By: Benjamin Labatut, Adrian West - translator
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger - these are some of the luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the listener, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence.
-
-
Phenomenal Stories About Ultra Geniuses
- By Z on 12-08-21
By: Benjamin Labatut, and others
-
No One Is Talking About This
- A Novel
- By: Patricia Lockwood
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
- Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts. When existential threats--from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness--begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal's void.
-
-
Funny, moving, glad to have read it
- By Terra on 05-26-21
-
The Lincoln Highway
- A Novel
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Marin Ireland, Dion Graham
- Length: 16 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car.
-
-
I'm totally opposite
- By Meaghan Bynum on 10-10-21
By: Amor Towles
-
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
- An Oprah’s Book Club Novel
- By: Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton, Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 29 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’ words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans - the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers - Ailey carries Du Bois’s Problem on her shoulders.
-
-
The Great American Novel is finally inclusive.
- By Margaret on 12-28-21
-
Behold the Dreamers (Oprah's Book Club)
- A Novel
- By: Imbolo Mbue
- Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, has come to the United States to provide a better life for himself; his wife, Neni; and their six-year-old son. In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark demands punctuality, discretion, and loyalty - and Jende is eager to please. Clark's wife, Cindy, even offers Neni temporary work at the Edwardses' summer home in the Hamptons.
-
-
Beautifully written and beautifully read
- By Barbara Dumas on 02-17-18
By: Imbolo Mbue
-
The Night Watchman
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, DC, this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman.
-
-
Beautiful
- By Melanie on 03-09-20
By: Louise Erdrich
-
When We Cease to Understand the World
- By: Benjamin Labatut, Adrian West - translator
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger - these are some of the luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the listener, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence.
-
-
Phenomenal Stories About Ultra Geniuses
- By Z on 12-08-21
By: Benjamin Labatut, and others
-
No One Is Talking About This
- A Novel
- By: Patricia Lockwood
- Narrated by: Kristen Sieh
- Length: 4 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts. When existential threats--from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness--begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal's void.
-
-
Funny, moving, glad to have read it
- By Terra on 05-26-21
-
The Lincoln Highway
- A Novel
- By: Amor Towles
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini, Marin Ireland, Dion Graham
- Length: 16 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car.
-
-
I'm totally opposite
- By Meaghan Bynum on 10-10-21
By: Amor Towles
-
Sea of Tranquility
- A Novel
- By: Emily St. John Mandel
- Narrated by: John Lee, Dylan Moore, Arthur Morey, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal—an experience that shocks him to his core.
-
-
An excellent listen.
- By Mark on 04-11-22
-
Against the Loveless World
- A Novel
- By: Susan Abulhawa
- Narrated by: Susan Abulhawa
- Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Nahr sits, locked away in solitary confinement, she spends her days reflecting on the dramatic events that landed her in prison in a country she barely knows. Born in Kuwait in the 70s to Palestinian refugees, she dreamed of falling in love with the perfect man, raising children, and possibly opening her own beauty salon. Instead, the man she thinks she loves jilts her after a brief marriage, her family teeters on the brink of poverty, she’s forced to prostitute herself, and the US invasion of Iraq makes her a refugee, as her parents had been.
-
-
Don’t narrate your own books!
- By Sara on 11-21-20
By: Susan Abulhawa
-
Bewilderment
- A Novel
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Theo Byrne is a promising young astrobiologist who has found a way to search for life on other planets dozens of light years away. He is also the widowed father of a most unusual nine-year-old. His son, Robin, is funny, loving, and filled with plans. He thinks and feels deeply, adores animals, and can spend hours painting elaborate pictures. He is also on the verge of being expelled from third grade for smashing his friend's face with a metal thermos.
-
-
Not Usually a Richard Powers Fan
- By Billy on 09-28-21
By: Richard Powers
-
How the Word Is Passed
- A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
- By: Clint Smith
- Narrated by: Clint Smith
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This compelling #1 New York Times bestseller examines the legacy of slavery in America—and how both history and memory continue to shape our everyday lives. Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the listener on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves.
-
-
Sincerely grateful read
- By Kelvin Dixon on 06-08-21
By: Clint Smith
-
Crying in H Mart
- A Memoir
- By: Michelle Zauner
- Narrated by: Michelle Zauner
- Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian-American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
-
-
Broken Korean
- By Tim on 04-21-21
By: Michelle Zauner
-
Invisible Child
- Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City
- By: Andrea Elliott
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 21 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Andrea Elliott follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani, a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. In this sweeping narrative, Elliott weaves the story of Dasani’s childhood with the history of her ancestors, tracing their passage from slavery to the Great Migration north. As Dasani comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis has exploded, deepening the chasm between rich and poor. She must guide her siblings through a world riddled by hunger, violence, racism, drug addiction, and the threat of foster care.
-
-
Narration is completely over the top
- By Heather on 10-14-21
By: Andrea Elliott
-
Cloud Cuckoo Land
- A Novel
- By: Anthony Doerr
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland, Simon Jones
- Length: 14 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Among the most celebrated and beloved novels of 2021, Anthony Doerr’s gorgeous third novel is a triumph of imagination and compassion, a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope—and a book. In Cloud Cuckoo Land, Doerr has created a magnificent tapestry of times and places that reflects our vast interconnectedness—with other species, with each other, with those who lived before us, and with those who will be here after we’re gone.
-
-
Academic Snobbery
- By TVR on 10-03-21
By: Anthony Doerr
-
Harlem Shuffle
- A Novel
- By: Colson Whitehead
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Ray Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.
-
-
What a rare pleasure
- By Lisa Braden on 09-27-21
By: Colson Whitehead
-
The Candy House
- A Novel
- By: Jennifer Egan
- Narrated by: Michael Boatman, Nicole Lewis, Thomas Sadoski, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bix is 40, with four kids, restless, desperate for a new idea, when he stumbles into a conversation group, mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or “externalizing” memory. It’s 2010. Within a decade, Bix’s new technology, “Own Your Unconscious” - that allows you access to every memory you’ve ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others - has seduced multitudes. But not everyone.
-
-
She did it again!! Love it!
- By Monica on 04-07-22
By: Jennifer Egan
-
The Copenhagen Trilogy
- Childhood; Youth; Dependency
- By: Tove Ditlevsen, Tiina Nunnally - translator, Michael Favala Goldman - translator
- Narrated by: Stine Wintlev
- Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Called "a masterpiece" by The Guardian, this courageous and honest trilogy from Tove Ditlevsen, a pioneer in the field of genre-bending confessional writing, explores themes of family, sex, motherhood, abortion, addiction, and being an artist. This program contains all three volumes of her memoirs.
-
-
Tough memoir, well told.
- By A. Cooper on 02-16-21
By: Tove Ditlevsen, and others
-
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
- As Told to Alex Haley
- By: Malcolm X, Alex Haley
- Narrated by: Laurence Fishburne
- Length: 16 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Experience a bold take on this classic autobiography as it’s performed by Oscar-nominated Laurence Fishburne. In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American dream and the inherent racism in a society that denies its non-White citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time.
-
-
Audible Masterpiece
- By Phoenician on 09-10-20
By: Malcolm X, and others
-
Animal Farm
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
- Length: 3 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
George Orwell's classic satire of the Russian Revolution is an intimate part of our contemporary culture, quoted so often that we tend to forget who wrote the original words! This must-read is also a must-listen!
-
-
If you hate spoilers, save the intro for last.
- By Dusty on 02-18-11
By: George Orwell
Publisher's Summary
A fearless young woman from a small African village starts a revolution against an American oil company in this sweeping, inspiring novel from the New York Times best-selling author of Behold the Dreamers.
One of the 10 Best Books of the Year: The New York Times, People • One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, The Christian Science Monitor, Marie Claire, Ms. magazine, BookPage, Kirkus Reviews
“Mbue reaches for the moon and, by the novel’s end, has it firmly held in her hand.” (NPR)
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.
Critic Reviews
"Sweeping and quietly devastating...How Beautiful We Were charts the ways repression, be it at the hands of a government or a corporation or a society, can turn the most basic human needs into radical and radicalizing acts.... Profoundly affecting." (The New York Times Book Review)
"What a stunningly beautiful writer Mbue is, and how lucky we are to have her stories in the world." (USA Today)
“It’s a heartbreaking and relevant story that seeps into your bones, quickly engulfs you and doesn’t let go.” (The Seattle Times)
More from the same
What listeners say about How Beautiful We Were
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 10-18-21
As relevant as it is heart-wrenching
In a time where folks in the US are defending the need for critical race theory and teaching a more complete and accurate history of our nation’s founding and coming of age ever since…. this novel drives straight to the heart of western colonization, extraction and extermination of African cultures. The extended chapters that illuminate the voices and private wonderings of each character are so moving, so insightful and passionate. Altho the story is fictional, we have too much information to deny the deep truth within it. As I finish the book this evening, I grieve for all the untold loss… of human lives, of homelands, of languages, music, the rituals. I won’t lie, this book was painful. Yet I’m glad to have “read” it for the belief that opening up to these difficult truths will allow me to tap the depths of humanity. My highest praise to you, Imbolo Mbue and thoughts of love and tenderness as you heal and emerge from the experience of the research and writing of How Beautiful We Were.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Benjamin W. Adams
- 04-04-21
powerful story, meh narration
This is a powerful and moving story beautifully written. I mainly struggled with being distracted by the very American accents of the supposed rural African villagers. It really took away from the book's authenticity.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David
- 06-28-21
Oil and Water
“How Beautiful We Were” is a dark, complex tale of the fight between poor Africans and the American oil company that has contaminated their village with their own government’s support. The rivers and the farmland have been poisoned with toxic chemicals from the oil company’s operations. Children are dying. The villagers innocently believe they can persuade the oil company or their unnamed government to do the right thing and stop the pollution. But neither the oil company nor the government is willing to change. The novel follows several members of one family dealing with the crisis. These characters are well drawn, changing as time passes and the situation worsens. Different sections of the novel are narrated by different members of this family—three generations speak—as well as by “the children” who offer an overview of the village’s actions. There were some slow patches in the novel, but overall I found it a well-written, thought-provoking tale of very real problems. The several narrators did a fine job.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mikal Gibson
- 06-08-21
Performance
The performers (narrators) ruined this book for me. Good story though might be better to read it.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- dearpru
- 04-12-22
Ambitious attempt to capture reality
This book bit off a big, toxic chunk of what is really happening to indigenous people all over the world and narrowed it down to the lives of a handful of individuals living in one African village who narrated the story. Entrancing at first, the tale soon grew preachy and heavy with on-the-nose wide-ranging reflections & observations made by the characters who became increasingly self-righteous, victimized or corrupted.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- S. Martin
- 09-13-21
Powerful / Brilliant /Beautifully written
A must read! A story that needed to be told. Wonderfully developed characters. The narration on Audible was superb. Mbue is amazingly talented and she has such a beautiful way with words. I will remember this story always!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 06-25-21
Great story teller!
Such an amazing read! Sad but true and we’ll narrated. I’m looking forward to the next book Mbole Mbue .
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- PDX
- 06-20-22
A tragedy, a heroine, a beloved place
So very sad. I had hope, but I knew there are no fairytale happy endings in Africa where imperialism and greed rule. I loved the character of Tula, I wanted her to be victorious. I wanted the Earth to be victorious. But I will give credit to the author, who made it realistic. I loved this book, despite the tragedy that unfolded. The characters and their development were well done, detailed, interesting and deep. Backgrounds were rich and believable. The narrators were fantastic. Each voice was unique and genuine.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ekwa
- 05-20-22
Epic!
it's a large, dense story told very thoroughly. The effects of corporate greed and revolution. Thank you for this offering!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- m. barbara sowers, m.d.
- 05-01-22
Beautiful
This is a wonderful yet sad story. The title reveals it all. The past tense is used not How Beautiful we ARE but How Beautiful we WERE. But despite the end it is a beautiful story of courage and resolve.