Soldiers and Kings

Winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction

Political instability, poverty, climate change, and the insatiable appetite for cheap labour all fuel clandestine movement across borders. As those borders harden, the demand for smugglers who aid migrants across them increases every year. Yet the real lives and work of smugglers - or coyotes, or guides, as they are often known by the migrants who hire their services - are only ever reported on from a distance, using tired tropes and stereotypes, often depicted as boogie men and violent warlords. In an effort to better understand this essential yet extralegal billion dollar global industry, internationally recognised anthropologist and expert Jason De Leon embedded with a group of smugglers moving migrants across Mexico over the course of seven years.

The result of this unique and extraordinary access is Soldiers and Kings: the first ever in-depth, character-driven look at human smuggling. It is a heart-wrenching and intimate narrative that revolves around the life and death of one coyote who falls in love and tries to leave smuggling behind. In a powerful, original voice, De Leon expertly chronicles the lives of low-level foot soldiers breaking into the smuggling game, and morally conflicted gang leaders who oversee rag-tag crews of guides and informants along the migrant trail.

Soldiers and Kings is not only a ground-breaking up-close glimpse of a difficult-to-access world, it is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction.