A Month By the Sea: Encounters in Gaza

Bombed and cut off from the rest of the world, life on the Gaza Strip is beset with difficulties. But intrepid Irish traveller Dervla Murphy decides to see things for herself. The eighty-year-old grandmother spends a month by the sea, walking, talking and listening her way to an understanding of this unique society, which is reviled by a quarter of the world and ignored by the rest. She discovers a community bursting with political engagement and resilience, yet underwritten by an intense enjoyment of family life.

The ironies of Western and Israeli attitudes to the Strip are ever present, not least the way in which violent attempts to eradicate terrorism breathe life into the very monster they aspire to destroy. Yet underlying the book is Dervla’s determination to try to understand how Arab Palestinians and Israeli Jew might forge a solution and ultimately live in peace.

‘A Month By the Sea is a restless antidote to the easy road of indifference…a fist-clenched polemic, an octogenarian waving magnificently, not drowning’ – Tom Adair, Scotsman