The Darién Gap

“The world could use more writers like BelÉn FernÁndez. Her curiosity is relentless (and contagious). And she brings an astonishing worldliness as well as a deep fount of smarts and empathy to whatever she takes on. This is a highly original and intrepid book about immigration and what it means to travel across borders of every sort.” - Jonathan Blitzer (author of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Cris) “BelÉn FernÁndez is among our most intelligent ‘on-the-spot’ journalists. She knows much of the world firsthand, and she critically connects its various hot spots into a larger whole. Her excellent The DariÉn Gap brings the reader into what was a thick jungle in a thin land but now is a well-trodden chokepoint on the global migrant highway. Fascinating and beautifully written.” - Greg Grandin (Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The End of the Myth) “BelÉn FernÁndez is a fearless journalist with deep empathy for her subjects. Her on-the-ground reporting is in the same spirit as George Orwell. She delivers the unvarnished truth of our time about people seeking safe harbor in a chaotic world.” - Melissa del Bosque (cofounder, The Border Chronicle)

BELÉN FERNÁNDEZ is an opinion columnist for Al Jazeera and the author of several books, including Inside Siglo XXI: Locked Up in Mexico’s Largest Immigration Center. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin and her work has appeared in the New York Times.