This Is Also a Love Story - by Sally Hayden (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

An acclaimed reporter takes us on an unforgettable journey through some of the world's most dangerous regions, capturing the human capacity for resilience, hope, and connection against all odds.

We live in an era defined by crisis--whether it be war and displacement, climate collapse and catastrophe, or the undercurrent of exploitation and corruption that profits from all of this violence and adversity. But in the midst of chaos, there are stories that reveal the strength of the human spirit. Celebrated foreign correspondent Sally Hayden has spent her career on the frontlines, uncovering some of the darkest moments of our time. Yet even in the face of unimaginable adversity, she's witnessed incredible love, hope, and resilience--powerful reminders that humanity can endure and rise above even the bleakest of moments.

In This Is Also a Love Story, Hayden captures these life-affirming moments that show the indomitable spirit of love and hope that persists even in the darkest times. Hayden introduces us to a mother in northeast Nigeria who risks everything to save her daughter from forced marriage to Boko Haram militants, and to a group of Syrian women who have tirelessly sought justice for their missing loved ones. We see a couple on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and letters from the bereaved to the dead and missing, still being written over a decade after the tsunami that devastated Japan. Through these stories, which crisscross the globe, from Ukraine to Japan, Uganda to Lebanon, Palestine to Spain, she challenges us to see beyond despair and recognize the innate generosity and self-sacrifice that define humanity.

Hayden asks us to encounter this profound adversity not through a lens of despair, but through a prism of hope. In the process, these stories of deep fracture, and often violence, can instead be constellated through something deeper and more human than greed or cruelty: the desire to love and be loved. This Is Also a Love Story dares us to look at the world through the innate generosity and self-sacrifice that can be found in even the darkest of times.

Review Quotes

Praise for My Fourth Time, We Drowned, Winner of The 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Writing

"A magnificent, engagé investigative report... [an] act of witness...It is clear from [Hayden's book] that the current politics of immigration have turned & twisted human nature against itself and our own kind and are fostering unimaginable maltreatment of those who wish only to survive and live a better life... [It] strongly convey[s] the urgency of fundamentally rethinking immigration policy... It is already late to act, but that is a poor reason for inaction."
--The New York Review of Books

"[A] landmark work of reportage about the migrant crisis."
--The New Yorker

"Hayden's powerful book relays the harrowing stories migrants have shared with her from their experiences in various Libyan migrant detention centers, from enduring near-starvation conditions to torture and even death...an accessible, critically reported account..."
--The Washington Post

"I frantically underlined journalist Sally Hayden's first book, My Fourth Time, We Drowned ... Readers should ... let Hayden's vital reporting make them reconsider their view of what makes a moral world."
--The Baffler

"A deeply researched and harrowing chronicle of the experiences of many refugees fleeing dictatorships, violence, persecution, and war. The book is the culmination of a one-woman fact-finding mission to uncover the myriad abuses faced by migrants hoping to make a better life for themselves in Europe."
--Foreign Policy

About the Author

Sally Hayden is an Irish journalist focused on migration, conflict, and humanitarian crises. Sally's work has been featured by The New York Times, the Irish Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, The Guardian, Channel 4 News, CNN International, Al Jazeera, Time, BBC, Die ZEIT, Der Spiegel, The Sunday Times (London), and other outlets across the world. Sally is the winner of the Orwell Prize and the Irish Book of the Year, and she was a finalist for the Baillie Gifford Prize and the New York Public Library's Helene Bernstein Book Award for excellence in journalism.