This Is Also a Love Story cover art

This Is Also a Love Story

Searching for Good in a Divided World

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This Is Also a Love Story

By: Sally Hayden
Narrated by: Aoife McMahon
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‘Deeply moving and necessary’ ANNE ENRIGHT

‘A must-read’ iPAPER

‘Original and heart-warming’ LINDSEY HILSUM

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

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.

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 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 love can be found in even the most difficult of times, and to question what might be needed to create a better world.

‘Moving … Hayden is an excellent journalist’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘A beautiful meditation on love … [Hayden] is our most vital journalist’ IRISH TIMES

‘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 reporter of the first orderA searching, deeply moving work’ JONATHAN BLITZER, author of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

‘Hayden uncovers miracles. She may be one herself’ ALEX PERRY, author of Blood Will Flow

©2026 Sally Hayden (P)2026 HarperCollins Publishers
Cultural & Regional Freedom & Security Military Politics & Government Social Sciences Africa Heartfelt Middle East Feel-Good Resilience War
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Critic reviews

Our most vital journalist, refusing to stop humanising those whose humanity is denied by those who perpetuate cruelty and unfairness’ Irish Times
‘It is the stories of romantic love that are, for me, the most moving … Hayden is an excellent journalistSunday Times
‘With world events as bleak as they are, here is a must-readiPaper
Both heartening and fascinating … Hayden is an eloquent writer and one whose words carry weight’ Literary Review
The best Irish journ­al­ist writ­ing today … remind[s] read­ers of those aspects of our human­ity that make life worth per­sever­ing with – and report­ing on’ Belfast Telegraph
A deeply moving and necessary book … [Hayden] gives us something to hold on to, in dark times’ Anne Enright, author of Attention
‘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
‘Remarkable … the perfect antidote to our times’ Christina Lamb, author of Our Bodies, Their Battlefields
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 reporter of the first orderA searching, deeply moving work’ Jonathan Blitzer, author of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here
Hayden uncovers miracles. She may be one herself’ Alex Perry, author of Blood Will Flow
A beautifully penned tribute to what can keep us human in the face of catastrophe’ Antony Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory
A beautiful book, as heart-lifting as it is heartrending’ Leila Molana-Allen, Special Correspondent, PBS Newshour
Brilliant. Bringing back hope to humanity’ Kojo Koram, author of Uncommon Wealth
One of the most important books of 2026’ Elizabeth Boyle, author of Fierce Appetites
Profoundly affecting … it is salutary to be reminded of the spotlights of love and altruism that illuminate even the darkest of stages’ Bookseller
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