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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An Post Irish Book Awards 2022: This year's winners revealed". The Irish Times. 23 November 2022 . Retrieved 24 November 2022. Ook schrijnend zijn de absurd hoge verwachtingen die sommige illegale migranten soms hebben... dan kan het alleen maar tegen vallen. 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

The UNHCR office in Tunis called Hayden “the enemy” for her reporting; the IOM deemed reports of deaths in Libyan detention “fake news”. Dozens of aid workers in Libya told her the UN agencies had allowed themselves “to be used by the EU, effectively whitewashing a brutal system of violence and torture”. My Fourth Time, We Drowned casts light on a dark world that would be only too visible if we cared to look. These are stories that should be heard by everyone.” — Geographical 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. The book is a painstaking work of primary research but it is also a furious and passionate polemic.” — Jonathan Coe This audiobook highlights why, in certain circumstances, nothing can replace the power of the spoken word. Aoife McMahon’s narration is extraordinary, as are the first-person accounts she presents of the lives of refugees in Libyan detention camps and their efforts to escape seemingly unfathomable conditions. McMahon’s delivery is precise and in many ways as haunting as the stories that author Sally Hayden recounts.” — AudioFileA deeply researched and harrowing chronicle of the experiences of many refugees fleeing dictatorships, violence, persecution, and war. The book is the culmination of a one-woman fact-finding mission to uncover the myriad abuses faced by migrants hoping to make a better life for themselves in Europe.” — Foreign Policy Kafka retold by an Irishwoman in Africa. Read this great book shedding light on a monstrous crime.” —John Sweeney, host of Hunting Ghislaine with John Sweeney A brilliant, unparalleled investigation of one of the most underreported scandals and monstrous crimes of our time.” — Responsible Statecraft

Chair of judges Caroline Sanderson said the books were “marvellously wide-ranging in terms of setting, era, and the creative approaches on display” and “however different the canvas, all have enthralling human stories at their heart”.

For refugees on the epic journey in search of safety – “the road of death” one Eritrean called it; the “Temple Run” they say in Sierra Leone, after the mobile phone game’s exhortation to “use amazing powers to cheat death” – phones are lifelines. Because of her award-winning investigative reporting on Syrian refugees, one of those hidden arteries found its way to Hayden in her sublet room in London. “Sister Sally,” a man WhatsApped her in 2018 from a Libyan detention centre for refugees, “we need your help.” 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. Everyone should read this book. It's so easy to gloss over headlines of suffering elsewhere in the world, assuming the UN will fix things. What happens when the UN and the EU are the problem? Who solves that? (Or the USA or any major Western power?) Generously sponsored by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils 2022 was judged by Sophia Parker (chair), Director of Emerging Futures and founder and former-CEO of Little Village, Annabel Deas, investigative journalist at BBC Radio 4 and winner of The Orwell Prize for Exposing Britain’s Social Evils 2021, Jo Swinson, Director of Partners for a New Economy and former Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Kirsty McNeill, Executive Director for Policy, Advocacy, and Campaigns at Save the Children, and Sophia Moreau, a multi-award winning campaigner and Head of Advocacy at Little Village. Sophia Parker said of Ed Thomas’s winning entry, The Cost of Covid – Burnley Crisis:

Your most treasured possession?: My laptop and camera, and various gifts from people I’ve met across the world. Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?: When I was about 16 my mom took me to Top Withins, which is said to be the inspiration for the Wuthering Heights farmhouse. By then, I had read many books by the Brontë sisters. Sally Hayden (28 September 2017). From Our Own Correspondent (radio). BBC Radio 4 . Retrieved 22 April 2022. 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”. An immensely powerful account… one of the most important and eye-opening books that I read last year.” — Johanna Thomas-Corr, Sunday Times literary editor.

Thursday 14 July 2022

My Fourth Time, We Drowned is compassionate, brave, enraging, beautifully written and incredibly well researched. Hayden exposes the truth about years of grotesque abuse committed against some of the world’s most vulnerable people in all of our names. After this, none of us can say we didn’t know.” — Oliver Bullough, author of ‘Moneyland’