Adult Book of the Month
A Month by the Sea: encounters in Gaza
by Dervla Murphy
Published by Eland in 2013
A Month by the Sea is the latest book by the veteran travel writer Dervla Murphy. Over the summer of 2011, she spent a month in Gaza where she met liberals and Islamists, Hamas and Fatah supporters, rich and poor. Through reported conversations she creates a vivid picture of day-to-day life in this coastal fragment of self-governing Palestine. Bombed and cut-off from normal contact with the rest of the world, life in Gaza is beset with problems, yet it is also bursting with political engagement and underwritten by an intense enjoyment of family life. Murphy combines her intimate portrayal of the lives of these ordinary people with an assessment of the political situation in the region providing a unique insight into the way in which isolation has shaped this society.
'Dashing in her insight, beautifully responsive to
environment, supportive to people of most sorts, sometimes exceedingly
funny...' Times Literary Supplement.
Dervla Murphy was born on in Lismore, Co. Waterford in 1931. Her first
book, Full Tilt was published in 1965 and over twenty other travel
books have followed. She still lives in County Waterford. Dervla and Evelyn
Conlon will be in conversation with Machán Magan at the Ennis Book
Club Festival on Saturday March 8th, 2014.
