How Beautiful We Were

Thula is the closest to a protagonist in the novel. She is an ambitious woman who becomes a leader in the movement to liberate Kosawa. Her drive brings her to study in America, where she learns from other people in protest spaces and comes to understand Kosawa’s predicament in a larger context. Her life has been shaped by grief, and she is often compared to her grandfather and father because of her inability to be happy in the face of any injustice. She derives purpose from her fight to free Kosawa, easily choosing this work over staying with her lover Austin.

Thula has an endless well of unfounded hope, which is necessary to keep fighting but is also seen as naive or a sign of mental illness by other characters. She is also often not taken seriously by villagers because of her gender and unmarried status. Likewise, she is dismissed by the government, which sees her as powerless—an underestimation that allows her to teach students in Bezam about government corruption. After Thula dies in an explosion, her name takes on symbolic meaning, and it is believed that the baby she was carrying may have been the true savior.