Following A Month by the Sea, her acclaimed exploration of life in Gaza, Dervla Murphy describes with passionate honesty the experience of living with and among Jewish Israelis and Palestinians in both Israel and Palestine. In cramped Haifa high-rises, in homes in the settlements and in a refugee camp on the West Bank, she talks with whomever she meets, trying to understand them and their attitudes with her customary curiosity, empathy and acute ear. Behind the book lies a desire to communicate the reality of life on the ground, and to puzzle out for herself what might be done to make peace in the region a possibility.
Meeting the wise, the foolish and the frankly deluded, she gradually knits together a picture of the patchwork that constitutes both sides of the divide – Hamas and Fatah, rural and urban, refugee, indigenous inhabitant, Russian, Black Hebrew and Kabbalist to name but a fraction.
'Her book is a kind of wake-up call to the world … The quality of Murphy’s sympathy and the sharpness of her mind offer a sort of blueprint for a new way of thinking and feeling about the plight of those who live now in the Gaza Strip.' Colm Tóibín, The Irish Times
