An account of the migrant crisis across North Africa, in a groundbreaking work of investigative journalism. With unprecedented access to people currently inside Libyan detention centers, Hayden's book is based on interviews with hundreds of refugees and migrants who tried to reach Europe and found themselves stuck in Libya once the EU started funding interceptions in 2017.
[A] devastating, moving, and damning account ... This is a brilliant, layered testament to the circle of hell where vulnerable migrants find themselves trapped. Hayden never flinches in documenting human nature at its worst ... She builds the story around the plight of migrants, placing their unfiltered voices at its centre, adeptly threading their emotions through the sharp needle of her reporting ... My Fourth Time, We Drowned will leave you with little doubt that the system addressing the migrant crisis is not fit for purpose. We need a new discussion and approach to this preventable humanitarian cataclysm. Hayden’s book enriches that debate.
While the migrant trail takes Hayden as far as Liberia and Rwanda, her book is not, chiefly, a compilation of field dispatches. Her most startling reporting on this most global of subjects is done from her London flat. And yet Hayden’s account is no less immediate or distressing for her physical remoteness. It is indeed that very remoteness that affords her such intimate access to her subjects, most of whom know her only as a Twitter profile picture ... Hayden is scathing about agencies established, in principle, to aid refugees on the ground ... The book’s accumulation of abuses and neglect and pleading voices builds to a dizzying cacophony. No cry of pain is extraneous. Reading it can feel like being beseeched by a desperate crowd, but My Fourth Time, We Drowned is journalism of the most urgent kind.
A meticulous account of the horrifying North African refugee crisis ... The book layers first-person testimonies from refugees whom Hayden built relationships with during her inquiry with a comprehensive history of the extraordinarily complicated situation, as well as sharp critiques of the egregious inefficiencies and corruption Hayden witnessed within the NGO and United Nations agencies purporting to provide support ... Hayden is thorough in her reporting and conscientious of her role as an information conduit between isolated, defenseless refugees and the outside world; she is telling their story because they begged her to. This is a clear overview of the complex, disturbing situations of desperate people in desperate circumstances—crises that are still underreported. Painstaking details and a roundabout timeline make My Fourth Time, We Drowned informative, while the testimonies from the refugees themselves pulse with difficult truths that will shock (and maybe mobilize) conscientious citizens across the globe.
