My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Irish Book of the Year, Winner of the Orwell Prize and Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2022

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Your book, My Fourth Time, We Drowned, has now won Irish Book of the Year , the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the Michel Déon Prize . For those who haven’t read it, can you describe its subject, explain how it came about and where the title comes from? The treatment of refugees has become one of the most devastating human rights disasters in our history. In this book, award-winning journalist Sally Hayden unfolds a staggering investigation into the migrant crisis across North Africa. My Fourth Time, We Drowned’ is brilliant, hugely important reportage on an ongoing situation many of us try to tune out.” — Marian Keyes

Sally Hayden is an award-winning journalist and photographer currently focused on migration, conflict and humanitarian crises.

A book to make me laugh?: They aren’t exactly comedy, but when I’ve travelled to various cities lately, like Accra, Lagos and Nairobi, I’ve read the associated book from the Akashic Noir series. They are collections of crime stories by writers set in their own country and some do contain wry humour.

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 Intrepidly reported and vividly written, this sobering account shines a spotlight on an underreported tragedy.” — Publishers Weekly Reading this made me grateful for living in a country with a national health service, freedom and peace (relatively). Heartbreaking stories and so necessary to read. Felt even more of a pang when I read the stories that I have already heard first hand from people I work with and for on a daily basis.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 In the finest tradition of George Orwell’s journalism, George Monbiot draws on a vast reserve of knowledge to write with wit, elegance, forensic insight, and sustained and justified anger about the most important, and most neglected, crisis facing humanity. His targets range from organised crime to criminal political indifference and he leaves us in no doubt about what we must do to survive.

One of the finest non-fiction books I have read in a long time.” — Matthew d’Ancona, Tortoise Media This vivid chronicle of the lives and dreams of those who risk all the cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe may make you cry, but it should make you angry. It is not just a blistering rebuke to those who torture, rape and imprison, but to the rest of us, who turn a blind eye.” — LindseyHilsum, International Editor, Channel 4 News Through its screen she saw horrors that Europe was intent on ignoring, disappearing photos and videos from disappearing people. “What is it like,” she reflects, “to watch innocent people being shot through Facebook Messenger?” Jarring messages interject in Hayden’s text the way they must have flashed as notifications on her phone. “They are beating and shooting us. There’s no food, no water. The children are crying, starving. Please.” A powerfully written amalgamation of narrative nonfiction and investigative journalism, My Fourth Time We Drownedis compelling reading for a wide audience.”— Mail & Guardian The Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2022: My Fourth Time, We Drowned by Sally Hayden (Harper Collins)a b c "War Journalist Sally Hayden receives 2020 Law Alumni Award". Sutherland School of Law . Retrieved 22 April 2022– via UCD.ie. Two Irish writers have won Britain’s leading prizes for political writing - one for a novel about a man taking a moral stand against a Magdalene laundry; the other for her book about the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean.

Does it make you see Ireland in a different light?: Yes and no. So many aspects of humanity are the same wherever you go, but of course there is a lot more privilege in Ireland. Who is your favourite fictional character?: I used to always love detectives, like Hercule Poirot and Lord Peter Wimsey. Hayden makes the list with her first book, My Fourth Time, We Drowned, which investigates the migrant crisis across north Africa and into Europe through the experience and testimony of refugees. The judges said it was “an exceptional, extraordinarily powerful work of reportage”. They praised “Hayden’s dogged determination to foreground the stories of those who brave the world’s deadliest migration route across the Mediterranean from Libya” and said it was “nothing short of heroic”. My reading of this coincided with all of the recent news in the UK about the Tory government's renewed attempts to stop small boats of migrants crossing the Channel from Europe. The book was already on my radar following it winning the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2022, and after reading the impressive The Naked Don't Fear the Water: A Journey Through the Refugee Underground last year.Yi-Dionne, Kim; Seay, Laura (18 December 2022). "It's International Migrants Day. These are three must-read books". WashingtonPost.com . Retrieved 19 December 2022. A]stonishingly detailed… My Fourth Time, We Drowned is not simply a catalogue of misery: it is a meticulously documented record of the complicity of the very organizations that are meant to be forces of good.” —The Times Literary Supplement Both Sally Hayden and Claire Keegan have, in very different ways, written gripping stories about things that should alarm us: there are awful truths right at the heart of our societies and systems,” Jean Seaton, the director of the Orwell Foundation, said. “However, in their wit, elegance and compassion, these powerful winning books also help us think about the choices we make, and how to make the future better. Orwell would be proud.”