This Is Also a Love Story, Sally Hayden
This Is Also a Love Story, Sally Hayden
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This Is Also a Love Story
A Reporter's Search for Goodness in a Cruel World

Author: Sally Hayden

Narrator: Aoife McMahon

Unabridged: 9 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/16/2026


Synopsis

An acclaimed reporter takes us on an unforgettable journey, capturing the human capacity for love and connection against all odds.

We live in an era defined by crisis—whether it be war and displacement, climate collapse, or growing inequality, and how the powerful profit from violence and exploitation. 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 the incredible goodness of regular people.

In This Is Also a Love Story, Hayden reexamines catastrophe through the love stories she has come across. She 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 searched for their missing spouses and children, while launching a call for justice. We meet a couple separated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and read letters from the bereaved to the dead, still being written over a decade after the tsunami that devastated Japan. Through these stories, which crisscross the globe, from Uganda to Lebanon, Ghana, Rwanda and Iraq, she challenges us to reconsider what it means to be alive on this planet today.

What if news was recounted through the prism of the actions and decisions people take for those they love? Would it become harder to dehumanize those who seem different to us? This Is Also a Love Story dares us to recognize how innate generosity and self-sacrifice 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.

About Sally Hayden

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 TimesThe Washington PostFinancial TimesThe Guardian, CNN International, Al JazeeraTime, BBC, and other outlets across the world. Sally’s first book My Fourth Time, We Drowned was the winner of the Orwell Prize and the Irish Book of the Year, and was a finalist for the Baillie Gifford Prize and the New York Public Library’s Helene Bernstein Book Award for excellence in journalism.


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Quotes

"A brilliant piece of work that proves love can survive war."

"Journalists are trained to look for and deliver facts, and Irish reporter Hayden did that, but she also did something more: She looked for love amid war. Narrator Aoife McMahon, with her delightful Irish accent, brings us the stories Hayden found while reporting the news. She explores war's impact on people and their relationships. She tells stories of the courageous soldier in Ukraine who confesses discomfort during his home visits and queer people in Ghana, where their love could have deadly consequences. From battle-scarred countries the world over, including Uganda, Iraq, and Rwanda, McMahon relates these stories with a beautiful dignity. They reveal terror and horror but also unexpected love, compassion, and survival."