Published in 2011 (first published 1979)
240 pages
Dervla Murphy is an Irish touring cyclist and author of adventure travel books for over 40 years. She is best known for her 1965 book Full Tilt: Ireland to India With a Bicycle, about an overland cycling trip through Europe, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
Murphy is a famous speaker and writer on Palestinian issues. She seeks the dissolution of Israel in its entirety.
Murphy normally travels alone and unaided, without luxuries and depending on the hospitality of local people. When not traveling, Murphy lives in Lismore, as she has for most of her life.
What is this book about?
In this beautifully written and searingly honest autobiography, the intrepid cyclist and traveler Dervla Murphy remembers her richly unconventional first thirty years. She describes her determined childhood self – strong-willed and beguiled by books from the first – her intermittent formal education and the intense relationship of an only child with her parents, particularly her invalid mother, whom she nursed until her death. Bicycling fifty miles in a day at the age of eleven, alone, it seems only natural that her first major journey should have been to cycle to India.
