Terzani Award, Sally Hayden wins. Special mention to the artist Ai Wei Wei

It goes to the Irish journalist Sally Hayden for the investigative book And the fourth time we drowned, published in Italy by Bollati Boringhieri (translation by Bianca Bertola), the XX edition of the Tiziano Terzani international literary prize, a recognition established from the cultural association near/far of Udine together with the Terzani family, in the name of the Florentine journalist and writer. This was announced by the president of the Jury Angela Terzani Staude, wife of Tiziano Terzani.

“Sally Hayden – stated Angela Terzani Stuade, making the motivation known – has given us a rigorous reportage, and at the same time of very powerful human truth, which presents us with the detailed picture of what is happening beyond the Mediterranean in the concentration camps of the Third Millennium , forcing us to question ourselves about a humanitarian scandal which sees us responsible as European citizens and Italians and which from now on none of us will be able to pretend to ignore without feeling guilty of indifference”.

“His book points the finger – writes the Jury – at the hypocrisies of the international bodies that the “European Union has set up, officially to protect the victims, but in fact to support the governments’ anti-immigration strategies, so that all of us, born by pure chance in the world of freedoms, we can turn the other way.”

I am extremely honored – declared Sally Hayden – to be the winner of the 2024 Terzani Prize. My reportage, over the years in which I worked on the book, focused on highlighting the abuses that are carried out in our name and on making hear the voices of vulnerable people suffering in those places. It has shown that we are involved in crimes against humanity, and I hope that this Award will bring more people in Italy to know about this tragic reality. I dedicate this Award to all those who risked their lives to send information from Libya and North Africa.”

On the twentieth anniversary of the Award, the Jury decided to award a Special Mention to the Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei per il memoir A thousand years of joys and sorrows, published in Italy by Feltrinelli (translated from English by Katia Bagnoli), “a heartfelt, programmatic and obstinate appeal – we read in the motivation – to protect at all costs even in the ‘democratic’ West, where worrying signs of censorship are beginning to appear towards free thought, the right to freedom of artistic expression and any other type of expression”.

Sally Hayden will receive the Terzani Award on Saturday 11 May in Udine (9pm, Teatro Nuovo Giovanni da Udine). She will be the protagonist of the evening-event which has always been the central moment of the near / far festival, this year scheduled for 7 to 12 May in its 20th edition.