My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge on the World's Deadliest Migration Route (Hardback)

Sally Hayden (author)

£20.00

Hardback 496 Pages / Published: 31/03/2022

Coming soon

Awaiting publication

Synopsis

Picked as a 'Book to Look Out For in 2022' in the Irish Times and the Irish Independent

'Compassionate, brave, enraging, beautifully written and incredibly well researched. Hayden exposes the truth' OLIVER BULLOUGH, author of MONEYLAND

'Blistering' LINDSEY HILSUM, author of IN EXTREMIS

The Western world has turned its back on refugees, fuelling one of the most devastating human rights disasters in history.

In August 2018, Sally Hayden received a Facebook message. 'Hi sister Sally, we need your help,' it read. 'We are under bad condition in Libya prison. If you have time, I will tell you all the story.' More messages followed from more refugees. They told stories of enslavement and trafficking, torture and murder, tuberculosis and sexual abuse. And they revealed something else: that they were all incarcerated as a direct result of European policy.

From there began a staggering investigation into the migrant crisis across North Africa. This book follows the shocking experiences of refugees seeking sanctuary, but it also surveys the bigger picture: the negligence of NGOs and corruption within the United Nations. The economics of the twenty-first-century slave trade and the EU's bankrolling of Libyan militias. The trials of people smugglers, the frustrations of aid workers, the loopholes refugees seek out and the role of social media in crowdfunding ransoms. Who was accountable for the abuse? Where were the people finding solutions? Why wasn't it being widely reported?

At its heart, this is a book about people who have made unimaginable choices, risking everything to survive in a system that wants them to be silent and disappear.

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780008445577
Number of pages: 496
Weight: 270 g
Dimensions: 240 x 159 x 34 mm

MEDIA REVIEWS

'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

'This vivid chronicle of the lives and dreams of those who risk all to 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'
Lindsey Hilsum, author of In Extremis

'A veritable masterclass in journalism ... The most riveting, detailed and damning account ever written on the deadliest of migration routes'
Christina Lamb, author of Our Bodies, Their Battlefield

'Read this great book shedding light on a monstrous crime'
John Sweeney, author of North Korea Undercover

'Her harrowing portrait captures the voices of the Eritreans, Somalis, Ethiopians, Gambians and Sierra Leoneans caught up in this pitiless modern slave trade ... This is a remarkable and important book'
Michela Wrong, author of Do Not Disturb

'Heart-stopping ... both a compelling epic and an intimate encounter with exact personal experience ... This is a vital book for anyone who wants to feel what it means to be human in the 21st century'
Fintan O'Toole, author of We Don't Know Ourselves

'This is a brilliant book, powerful and emotional ... A must read for anyone with a conscience'
Miriam O'Callaghan, host of Prime Time (Ireland)

'Remarkable ... A years-long effort to document the courage, humour, kindness, and resilience of ordinary people trapped by circumstance, and the tragic moral failure of the west to help them'
Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down

'Intrepidly reported and vividly written'
Publishers Weekly