From a leading global authority, a vital, moving investigation exposing one of the greatest hidden human rights crises of our time.



'A very important and arresting book . . . the raw power of Columb's writing marks this project apart.' CAL FLYN





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This is the story of a crisis that the world has chosen to ignore. It is the story of Yonas, a young man who escaped indefinite service in the Eritrean military only to have his kidney removed upon arrival in Egypt; of Asha, a victim of employment fraud forced to give up an organ to save her children; of Anisha, who was ready to sacrifice her kidney to pay for her father's hospital fees.





Seán Columb has researched the illegal trade in organs for over a decade, travelling between Europe and North Africa to meet people who, in the process of fleeing violent regimes and navigating deadly borders, have been forced to sell the only resource available to them: their bodies.





Through these encounters, he is introduced to a criminal underworld where ordinary people are forced to make impossible choices. He meets organ sellers who become brokers and medical professionals complicit in illicit networks; smugglers who have become de facto gatekeepers to asylum, officials who turn a blind eye for a share of the profits, and transplant patients receiving trafficked organs and risking their own lives in the process.





Drawing on intimate interviews centring the lives and experiences of those caught in its depths, Red Lines takes readers inside one of the world's most most secretive and exploitative black markets - where moral and ethical boundaries are regularly crossed in pursuit of profit, and human lives are reduced to spare parts to be bought and sold.





WINNER OF AN RSL GILES ST AUBYN AWARD



Seán Columb is a Reader in Law at the School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool. His work on organ trafficking has been published in academic and broadsheet publications; it also formed the basis of a highly watched BBC Panorama episode. In 2023 Columb received the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Law; he received the 2024 Giles St Aubyn Award for Red Lines.