This Is Also a Love Story

Searching for Good in a Divided World

By: Sally Hayden

Narrated by: Aoife McMahon

‘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

©2026 Sally Hayden

Critic reviews

Praise for This is Also a Love Story:

‘Original and heart-warming … By finding beauty amidst ugliness, [Hayden] finds a way of making our fractured world whole again’ Lindsey Hilsum, author of I Brought The War With Me

‘Bringing us hope from dark places, this remarkable book is the perfect antidote to our times’ Christina Lamb, author of Our Bodies, Their Battlefields

‘Sally Hayden's gorgeous work of reportage 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

‘Sally Hayden is a reporter of the first order … A searching, deeply moving work that documents how life and love persist against seemingly insurmountable odds’ Jonathan Blitzer, author of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

‘A glorious revelation: how it is in the world’s darkest corners that you find its most remarkable people. Sally Hayden uncovers miracles. She may be one herself’ Alex Perry, author of Blood Will Flow

‘Stunning … 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

‘A beautiful book, as heart-lifting as it is heartrending … strikes to the very heart of why we, as foreign correspondents, are drawn to these places despite the risk. Because we know what we will find there: love against all odds’ Leila Molana-Allen, Special Correspondent, PBS Newshour

‘Profoundly affecting … it is salutary to be reminded of the spotlights of love and altruism that illuminate even the darkest of stages’ Bookseller

‘A vivid and affecting reimagining of both reportage and how its consumers are called to relate to its content’ Kirkus