MILLIONS of migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua have been displaced for decades due to violence, poverty, lack of employment or other threats such as disasters, many of them making the perilous journey to cross into the US.

In desperation, thousands of vulnerable people moved and are still moving north through irregular channels, facing along the way bureaucratic barriers, and suffering accidents and injuries, extortion and sexual violence, many disappearing and being separated from their families. Others are tortured, killed or die from diseases or the harsh conditions they face during their journeys. 

Solito (Oneworld, £18.99) by Salvadorian American poet and activist Javier Zamora vividly recounts the author’s memories as a nine-year-old boy nicknamed Chepito, in his treacherous journey to reach the US to rejoin his parents, who had left El Salvador separately a few years earlier due to the civil war and lack of jobs in their home country.

The boy from the small town of La Herradura is accompanied to the Salvadorian Guatemalan border by his grandfather, leaving behind his immediate family, friends, pet and country. From then on, he embarked alone on a long trip that risked his life and that of those who crossed with him on countless occasions. 

During his seven-week journey north, the boy encountered other migrants along the way, including a group that accompany him until the last crossing. Among them are Patricia and her 12-year-old daughter Carla; Chino, who becomes like an older brother and protector; and the more distant Marcelo and Chele, as well as the many “coyotes” who try to smuggle them across the Mexico-US border through the desert.  

“His hand still waving. My face pressed against the back window’s glass. I concentrate on Grandpa’s light-brown hand waving. Grandpa getting smaller and smaller as the bus rattles forward. He becomes a cloud. A marble. A hand. A fingernail. A white dot. I take a breath in. Adios, I whisper to myself”, the author writes as he recounts the moment he leaves behind his grandfather at the Guatemalan border and is, for the first time alone, “solito”.

A journey of more than 4,000 kilometres includes many bus trips where the boy and his group of migrants try to hide from the military, a perilous boat journey in the Pacific Ocean to cross from Guatemala into Mexico, weeks waiting in motels and safe houses, and various attempts to reach the US border through the Sonoran desert while trying to evade the “Migra”, a slang term for US armed border patrols.

“This is the longest I’ve ever walked. It’s daylight, and no Migra. Gracias a Dios. Our pace is slowing down… If we pause and stand still, we actually do look like a centipede, dark and long with many legs, because everyone wears dark colours. But we also look like some of the bushes — the ones with dark-grey trunks and dark-green leaves. And if we slide under them, we look like shadows”, says Javier during his second attempt at the border.
    
This incredible book, a recent winner of the Christopher Isherwood Prize, is full of moving descriptions of people, places and emotions seen through the eyes of a Central American boy. It is an outstanding contribution to migration literature. It should become a compulsory read in schools, to understand better the ordeals that millions of migrants face daily trying to cross borders.

Solito is not only a masterpiece of memoir writing but one of my favourite books of non-fiction published in recent years. It is a powerful human account that transcends languages, countries and cultures. 

The book sings its heart out with devastating force: it’s full of life, struggle and hope.