Imbolo Mbue (born 1981) is a Cameroonian American novelist and short story writer based in New York City.

Mbue was born in 1981 in Limbé, Cameroon, in the English-speaking region of the country, where she was raised until the family sponsored her higher education studies in the United States.

[3] After completing her undergraduate and graduate studies, she began a job in marketing for a media company, which she lost during the recession.

[8] She began to work in the corporate sector in New York City, but lost her job as did millions of Americans during the Great Recession.

The novel garnered critical acclaim for, according to NPR, the way it "depicts a country both blessed and doomed, on top of the world, but always at risk of losing its balance.