The Beast
Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail
Óscar Martínez author John Washington translator Daniela Maria Ugaz translator Francisco Goldman editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Verso Books
Published:3rd Jun '14
£10.99
Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.
"A revelatory work of love and hair-raising courage." -New York Review of Books
Illustrated with stunning full-color photographs, The Beast is the first book to shed light on the harsh new reality of the migrant trail in the age of the narcotraficantes.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Economist & The Financial Times
One day a few years ago, 300 migrants were kidnapped between the remote desert towns of Altar, Mexico, and Sasabe, Arizona. A local priest got 120 released, many with broken ankles and other marks of abuse, but the rest vanished. Óscar Martínez, a young writer from El Salvador, was in Altar soon after the abduction, and his account of the migrant disappearances is only one of the harrowing stories he garnered from two years spent traveling up and down the migrant trail from Central America and across the US border. More than a quarter of a million Central Americans make this increasingly dangerous journey each year, and each year as many as 20,000 of them are kidnapped.
Martínez writes in powerful, unforgettable prose about clinging to the tops of freight trains; finding respite, work and hardship in shelters and brothels; and riding shotgun with the border patrol. Illustrated with stunning full-color photographs, The Beast is the first book to shed light on the harsh new reality of the migrant trail in the age of the narcotraficantes.
A heartbreaking book about the world's most invisible people. A revelatory work of love and hair-raising courage. -- Alma Guillermoprieto, Latin America correspondent for the New York Review of Books, author of Dancing with Cuba
To understand the dramatic realities faced by the migrants who flee northwards to find work in the United States, Óscar Martínez literally jumped trains and dodged killers. He deserves praise not only for his efforts, and for what he writes about, but because he writes so very well. -- Jon Lee Anderson, staff reporter for the New Yorker
Óscar Martínez is a journalist of uncommon bravery and a writer of prodigious talent. The Beast is a powerful, necessary book, one of the finest pieces of journalism to emerge from Latin America in years. -- Daniel Alarcón, author of At Night We Walk in Circles
Forget the rhetoric, the politics, and the propaganda. The Beast is the real story of the drug war. * Lithub *
ISBN: 9781781682975
Dimensions: 198mm x 127mm x 19mm
Weight: 348g
224 pages