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Amexica
Amexica
Aug 2, 2025 7:04 AM

Author:Ed Vulliamy

Amexica

Between the interiors of the USA and Mexico lies a borderland: Amexica.

A terrain astride the world’s busiest frontier, teeming with migrants, factory workers, narcos, tourists, heroines and heroes, ranchers and rogues.

A border both porous and harsh, criss-crossed by a million people every day.

A warzone, where a grotesque pastiche of the globalised economy plays out in a tragedy of unfathomable violence as drug cartels and state forces face off.

Amexica is a journey through the cartels’ reach into the borderland’s daily life: through migrant camps, drug-smuggling ‘plazas’, rehab centres, sweatshop factories and the mass-murder of women. Updated with new material ten years on it paints an essential portrait of a country under siege - and testament to people who carry on regardless.

‘Previously, to understand the ruthlessness, ambition and impact of today's global criminals, you needed to read Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah and Misha Glenny's McMafia. Now, you also need to read Vulliamy's Amexica’ The Sunday Times

Reviews

Amexica is fascinating, infuriating and inspiring. Essential reading

—— Don Winslow, author of The Power of the Dog

A work of vivid social reportage

—— Spectator

A harrowing read about the narcowars in Mexico, economic exploitation and the horrors of the globalised drug trade

—— Fatima Bhutto , New Statesman

Previously, to understand the ruthlessness, ambition and impact of today's global criminals, you needed to read Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah and Misha Glenny's McMafia. Now, you also need to read Vulliamy's Amexica

—— Sunday Times

The most vivid book so far published in English on the bloody calamity that has been visited on Mexico's northern border lands

—— Hugh O'Shaughnessy , Observer

Vulliamy is the ideal foreign correspondent to analyse the phenomenon. He knows the border well and was one of the first to report on the murdered women of Ciudad Juárez. He also refuses to find easy answers to difficult questions. While some commentators have made glib assumptions about the Mexican propensity for brutality, Amexica shows that the crushing power of the multinationals in a low-wage economy is a key factor

—— Independent

Ed Vulliamy provides a brilliant, rigorous analysis

—— Independent

With a great sense of timing, Vulliamy now comes out with the most vivid book so far published in English on the bloody calamity that has been visited on Mexico's northern border lands... The author has done a great deal of painstaking work in investigating and describing the blood-soaked frontier and the political cross-currants in both regions... it stands that this is a fascinating introduction to the bloody last act of the "war on drugs", which must surely soon pass unlamented into history

—— Hugh O'Shaughnessy , The Observer, New Review

This absorbing odyssey along the Mexican-American border gives pause for thought to anyone who ignores the side-effects of cocaine...Vulliamy's reporting is faultlessly brave ...the scenery and characters he meets are brought alive with vividness and intensity'

—— Alex Spillius , Telegraph

An engrossing meditation on the theme of migration…reads like a collaboration between Dorothy Wordsworth and Darwin.

—— Mark Sanderson , Sunday Telegraph

Naomi Novik reinvents the magical school story by working a strange, funny, wild, dark magic all her own. This is not just your next great read - it's your new obsession.

—— GWENDA BOND

Novik is a master at setting up a plot to unfurl in a series of staggeringly well-thought out bursts of action, weaving together into an imaginative climax.

—— LAUREN JAMES

A Deadly Education is a book that lives up to its gob smacker of an opening sentence and follows right through to its shocker of an ending that promises more to come. Naomi Novik is relentlessly innovative and entertaining

—— TERRY BROOKS

Fresh, smart, and delightfully unique. It's Hogwarts with higher stakes and sharper claws, and I absolutely loved it.

—— ALIX E. HARROW

The author's most entertaining novel to date

—— SFX

Fun and beautifully written

—— Metro

A story that never stops moving while always remaining focused on developing the characters of both the people and the school itself

—— Locus Magazine

A wonderful book ... done with a gorgeous twist of humour and great emotional insight ... One of my books of the year

—— Ryan Tubridy , RTÉ Radio 1

Exquisite ... One of the funniest writers in Ireland

—— Irish Examiner

Immensely readable, warm, human and very, very funny

—— Irish Daily Star

Pixies were loud-quiet-loud. Patrick Freyne is funny-sad-funny. I really loved his new book

—— Ed O'Loughlin , via Twitter

Readers are sure to find themselves touched by Freyne's writing ... Delightful

—— Journal.ie

Freyne's thoroughly entertaining debut is a flash of warmth and wit in the darkness

—— Totally Dublin

Genuinely moving ... [It] will evoke warmth in anyone who isn't totally sociopathic

—— Hot Press

A delightful insight into the mind of the hilarious Patrick Freyne

—— Irish Country Magazine

So honest, so funny, and most importantly, 11/10 for self-deprecation

—— Sarah Breen

Brilliant ... An absolute mind hug

—— Niall Breslin

Freyne's radar is precision-honed to find the madness within the mundane

—— Sunday Independent

More moving that I ever expected and somehow funnier than I assumed

—— Emer McLysaght , Irish Times, Best Books of 2020

Captivating and moving.

—— Tablet, *Summer Reads of 2021*

Moving... Beneath the attention-seeking is a well-loved author who has gone through his cupboards, giving us all that he has.

—— Johanna Thomas-Corr , Sunday Times

A defiant and witty testimony to mortality and a tender remembrance of his friends and literary heroes… I’ve been reading and re-reading it this year

—— Times Literary Supplement, *Books of the Year*

Continues in the same superior vein as Restoration… The fusion of such an engrossing character, and the minutiae of another time, remains a marvel

—— Daily Telegraph

In this evocative and beautifully drawn novel of family and loyalty in the face of an uncertain future Tremain continues the story of a wonderfully unique character

—— Hannah Britt , Daily Express

Hugely enjoyable

—— Reader's Digest

Merivel’s hapless charm remains intact in this tour de force of literary technique

—— Sunday Telegraph (Seven)

A sequel that looks back to the earlier novel without ever quite recapturing its spirit is the perfect form in which to evoke that feeling of having to carry on, and of trying to make yourself have fun even with it eventually begins to hurt

—— Colin Burrow , Guardian

A marvelllously rollicking good read, and it is such a pleasure to meet Robert Merivel again. Rose Tremain brings the character to life in a way that makes you want to find out even more about the period. Enormously skilled and deft

—— Good Book Guide
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