‘Original and heart-warming’ LINDSEY HILSUM

‘Remarkable … the perfect antidote to our times’ CHRISTINA LAMB

‘A searching, deeply moving work’ JONATHAN BLITZER

From the Orwell Prize-winning author of My Fourth Time, We Drowned comes a powerful account of human resilience, capturing our capacity for love and connection against all odds.

We live in an era defined by crisis – whether it be war and displacement, or climate collapse and rapidly widening inequality. Acclaimed international correspondent Sally Hayden has spent her career covering some of the darkest moments of our time, and yet even in the face of unimaginable adversity, she’s witnessed the love and care of everyday people.

In This is Also a Love Story, Hayden introduces us to a couple separated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a mother in northeast Nigeria who risks everything to save her daughter from forced marriage to Boko Haram militants. We meet a group of Syrian women searching tirelessly for their missing spouses and children, while launching a call for justice, and learn about letters from the bereaved to the dead, still being written over a decade after the tsunami that devastated Japan.

In stories that crisscross the globe, from Uganda to Lebanon, Rwanda to Iraq, Hayden asks us: what if news was recounted through the prism of the actions people take for those they love? Would it become harder to dehumanise those who seem different to us? This is Also a Love Story dares us to recognise how connection, self-sacrifice and love can be found in even the most difficult of times, and – as a result – to question what might be needed to create a better world.

‘A glorious revelation … Sally Hayden uncovers miracles. She may be one herself’ ALEX PERRY, author of Blood Will Flow

‘Shows us that in the midst of war, around the most acute suffering, there is also tremendous heroism’ NATHAN THRALL, author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama

‘A beautifully penned tribute to what can keep us human in the face of catastrophe. Read this book to lighten your soul’ ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN, author of The Palestine Laboratory