This Irish author is renowned for her adventure travel books, chronicling solo cycling expeditions undertaken for over four decades. Her narratives are characterized by raw realism and a focus on the unfiltered experience of traveling light and relying on local hospitality. She weaves profound observations about diverse cultures and complex political landscapes into her accounts, unafraid to voice strong opinions on contentious issues.
Dervla Murphy begins her autobiography in Lismore, Co Waterford. Her father was the county librarian and her mother a chronic invalid. She portrays the strain that her mother's increasing illness had on the family.
Describes day-to-day life in the camps where hundreds of children are living in squalor while a handful of dedicated volunteers do their best to feed and care for them, attempting to keep disease at bay with limited resources.
Exploring South Africa during a pivotal time in its history, Dervla Murphy's journey spans over 6000 miles across all nine provinces. Her narrative captures the contrasts of life in the country, from impoverished ex-"homeland" villages to affluent white neighborhoods. Through her interactions with diverse communities, including the vast black township of Khayelitsha and rural Boers, she offers profound insights into the social and cultural dynamics of post-apartheid South Africa, reflecting on both the challenges and connections within this evolving landscape.
This is the first travel book that tested the idea that a five-year-old daughter makes for a useful international travelling companion. Together Dervla Murphy and her daughter Rachel with little money, no taste for luxury and few concrete plans meander their way slowly south from Bombay to the southernmost point of India, Cape Comorin.
A MONTH BY THE SEA gives unique insight into the way in which isolation has shaped this society: how it radicalises young men and plays into the hands of dominating patriarchs, yet also how it hardens determination not to give in and turns family into a towering source of support.
In 1966 Dervla Murphy travelled the length and breadth of Ethopia, first on a mule, Jock, whom she named after her publisher, and later on a recalcitrant donkey. The remarkable achievement was not surviving three armed robberies or the thousand-mile trail, but the gradual growth of affection for and understanding of another race.
Describes the author's various journeys by air, by bicycle and on foot into the remote and mountainous Lantang region on the border of Tibet.
Dervla Murphy and her six-year-old daughter walked into the Karakorum mountains in the heart of the western Himalayas and along the perilous Indus Gorge. Accompanied by only a gallant polo pony, they endured conditions that tested their limits of ingenuity, fortitude and courage and, remarkably, with little loss of good humour. This is their story.
A Place Apart is a remarkable geographical and psychological travelogue that rises above history, politics, theology and economics.
An account of how Dervla Murphy, on her bicycle, pedalled some 3000 miles to India through Eastern Europe, Persia, Afghanistan, the Himalayas and Pakistan. The book is based on the travel diary she kept at the time. Dervla Murphy is the author of "The Ukimwi Road".
