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Diamonds, Murder, and a Clash of Worlds in the Amazon
by Alex Cuadros
The "gripping and astonishing story" (Douglas Preston) of the Cinta Larga, a tribe that had no contact with the West until the 1960s and came to run an illegal diamond mine in the Amazon.
Growing up in a remote corner of the world's largest rainforest, Pio, Maria, and Oita learned to hunt wild pigs and tapirs, gathering Brazil nuts and açaí berries from centuries-old trees. Then the first highway pierced through, ranchers, loggers, and prospectors invaded, and they lost their families to terrible new weapons and diseases. Pushed by the government to assimilate, they struggled to figure out their new, capitalist reality, discovering its wonders as well as its horrors. They ended up forging an uneasy symbiosis with their white antagonists—until decades of suppressed trauma erupted into a massacre, an act of retribution that made headlines across the globe.
Based on six years of immersive reporting and research, When We Sold God's Eye tells a unique kind of adventure story, one that begins with a river journey by Teddy Roosevelt and ends with smugglers from Antwerp and New York City's Diamond District. It's a story of survival against all odds; of the temptations of wealth and the dreams of prosperity; of a vital ecosystem threatened by the hunger for natural resources; of genocide and revenge. It's a story as old as the first European encounters with Indigenous peoples, playing out in the present day. But most of all, it's about a few startlingly clever individuals and their power to adapt and even thrive in the most unlikely circumstances.
"An Amazonian tribe fractures, turns to illegal pillaging of their own lands, and perpetuates a shocking massacre in this intricate and tragic account. Cuadros depicts the Cinta Larga's fall from grace in vivid prose. Readers will be riveted." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Stone Age people encounter the modern world, with predictable results...An impassioned story." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A vibrant, in-depth, and eye-opening account of conflict in the Amazon with dire cultural and environmental consequences." ―Booklist
"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 of The Lost City of the Monkey God
"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 of The End of Nature
This information about When We Sold God's Eye was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Alex Cuadros is the author of Brazillionaires: Wealth, Power, Decadence, and Hope in an American Country, which was longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award. A former Bloomberg staff reporter, he's also written for the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post, and his article on the Amazon's ecological tipping point was chosen for 2024's Best American Science and Nature Writing. This book was supported by the Alicia Patterson Foundation and the Fund for Investigative Journalism; Cuadros has also received grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He spent six years based in Brazil and has been reporting from the Amazon since 2013. He now lives with his wife in San Francisco.
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