When We Sold God's Eye: A MODERN CLASSIC OF LITERARY NONFICTION JON LEE ANDERSON

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'A first-class work of reporting [and] a work of compassion for Indigenous peoples everywhere' BENJAMIN MOSER, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of SONTAG

'A non-fiction novel of modern conquest, capitalism and murder . . . a stunning work' GREG GRANDIN, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of FORDLANDIA

When We Sold God's Eye tells the astonishing true story of the Cinta Larga, an Amazonian tribe uncontacted by the Western world until the 1960s. Forced by the government to assimilate, they traded away their natural resources - exceptional diamonds - in exchange for the so-called comforts of industrial society. But one day, decades of trauma finally erupted into violence, in an act of vengeance that made headlines around the world.

Reviews

So powerful . . . Cuadros, an American reporter who spent years living and working in Brazil and speaks fluent Portuguese, found the perfect man and incident to tell this achingly tragic story. And unlike so many others, he tells it from the point of view of the Indigenous people themselves, at a scale small enough to hold in your hand -- Carl Hoffman * Washington Post *
Extraordinary . . . Forces the reader to contend with the brutality that all humans are capable of when they receive sudden wealth and power * Economist *
At the heart of Cuadros's lush, textured epic, layered with emotions and motivations both foul and fair, is an indictment of colonization itself -- Andre Pagliarini * The New Republic *
Fascinating . . . The quandaries play out on an intimate scale thanks to the details Cuadros gleaned in extensive interviews with Pio and his peers. This book has the pace of a novel and the whodunit suspense of investigative journalism * Foreign Policy *
Cuadros, a veteran journalist of South American political economy, spent months on the ground reporting this story and years digging into the history and honing his sense for contradiction to a fine edge, revealing how a tribe found both freedom and catastrophe in the discovery of one of the world's largest diamond deposits . . . Imagine Killers of the Flower Moon but set in Brazil -- Charles Petersen * n+1 *
To the shelf of anthropological classics that includes Gregory Bateson's Naven, Levi Strauss's Tristes Tropiques, and Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa, we can now add Alex Cuadros's When We Sold God's Eye. Cuadros takes us into one of the most forbidding regions of the globe, and inside the minds of an ancient people as they take their first - diseased, bloodstained - steps into so-called civilization. A first-class work of reporting, this book is above all a work of compassion for Indigenous peoples everywhere, forced to navigate a nearly impossible passage -- Benjamin Moser, Pulitzer Prize-winning author * SONTAG *
Beyond just a tale of conquest and assimilation, When We Sold God's Eye is a page-turner of adventure and tragedy, more akin to a fiction thriller than a typical work of straightforward reporting. Cuadros translates - literally and figuratively - a group of fascinating real-life characters for the page, giving them a level of agency and dimension rarely achieved in stories like this. This is the type of deeply reported and carefully written book that the world needs more of -- David Weiner * Gossamer *
An essential story, built on deep and empathetic reportage. A hugely impressive piece of work -- Sophie Elmhirst, author * MAURICE AND MARALYN *
WHEN WE SOLD GOD'S EYE raises the biggest questions of our time and, much to its credit, offers no easy answers. Like the Amazon itself, it is rich, fascinating, and totally alive -- Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author * THE SIXTH EXTINCTION *
Penetrating and wise; this book lit up a part of life that I'd known nothing about -- Noreen Masud, author * A FLAT PLACE *
This book reads like a wondrous combination of Heart of Darkness and In Cold Blood, a nonfiction novel of modern conquest, capitalism, and murder. Cuadros writes with unsentimental compassion and unflinching moral clarity, investing his protagonists with human complexity while still reckoning with the broader social forces driving the destruction of the Amazon. A stunning work -- Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author * THE END OF THE MYTH and FORDLANDIA *
Cuadros's narrative, based on six years of interviews, is laid out unsentimentally . . . He portrays his subjects - wide-boy Oita, the more sensitive Pio, the resilient Maria Beleza - as rounded individuals trying to navigate this new world of commerce, capitalism, temptation and laws. But this is no mere Rousseauean paradise lost, and Cuadros never shies from personal failings, domestic violence and petty jealousies: the brutality and hardship of the forest are portrayed unvarnished -- Oliver Basciano * ArtReview *
Cuadros, a veteran journalist of South American political economy, spent months on the ground reporting this story and years digging into the history and honing his sense for contradiction to a fine edge, revealing how a tribe found both freedom and catastrophe in the discovery of one of the world's largest diamond deposits in its territory. Imagine Killers of the Flower Moon but set in Brazil instead of Oklahoma -- Charles Petersen * n+1 *
In the annals of destruction of the world's wildernesses and their indigenous peoples, WHEN WE SOLD GOD'S EYE deserves widespread attention, and seems destined to become a modern classic of literary nonfiction -- Jon Lee Anderson, author * CHE: A REVOLUTIONARY LIFE *
Truly remarkable reporting, opening a window into one of the planet's most important places, and the people who live out their lives amidst its riches. It will complicate your view of the world, which is usually a useful thing -- Bill McKibben, author * THE END OF NATURE *
Alex Cuadros spent years culturally embedded with the Cinta Larga, and tells their tragic but exciting story. He achieves the remarkable feat of understanding and sympathizing with both sides' attitudes, cultures, and motives, with a vibrant cast of real people -- John Hemming, author * THE CONQUEST OF THE INCAS *
An extraordinary work of narrative nonfiction, telling the gripping and astonishing story of how a small group in the Amazon, invaded and brutally treated by white settlers and miners, ended up exploiting an illicit diamond mine themselves. This is a complex and tragic story, deeply reported and beautifully written - a remarkable literary achievement -- Douglas Preston, #1 New York Times bestselling author * THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD *
A remarkable feat of research embedded in vivid and compelling prose . . . Bursting with wild, chaotic clashes of human values and exposing profound greed, corruption, violence, courage, survival, and the everyday contradictions within us all, WHEN WE SOLD GOD'S EYE offers us new levels of understanding of Western society's relationship to our earth and to cultures vastly different from our own. A must read, simultaneously heartbreaking and heart-filling -- Susan Southard, author * NAGASAKI: LIFE AFTER NUCLEAR WAR *

Author Bio

Alex Cuadros is a former Bloomberg staff reporter and the author of Brazillionaires, which was long-listed for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award. He spent six years based in Brazil and has been reporting from the Amazon since 2013.