Desperate measures

A gripping exposé of US people-smugglers is full of the writer's trademark rigour and humanity.

- JENNY NICHOLLS

THE SNAKEHEAD: An epic tale of the Chinatown underworld and the American dream, by Patrick Radden Keefe ($39.99, Picador)
When Sean Chen saw the 45m Golden Venture floating in the harbour in Kenya's Mombasa, it looked too small, he thought, to get him and hundreds of other undocumented migrants across the Atlantic to the American east coast. Many of his fellow travellers agreed, and flatly refused to get on. But Sean was 18 years old, and filled with resilient optimism. He had spent weeks trekking through the Burmese jungle, and months living on a cargo ship which ran out of food off the African coast.

Like thousands of others, he had left home in the Fujian Province in China without any ID or documents - no passport, no visas, nothing except a few T-shirts and pants in a backpack. Chen had been expelled from school at 14 after joining his cousin's pro-democracy protest. After harassment from local authorities, his parents paid people smugglers, or "snakeheads", a down payment to get their boy to the US.