A Month by the Sea: Encounters in Gaza

Over the summer of 2011, Dervla Murphy spent a month in the Gaza Strip. She met liberals and Islamists, Hamas and Fatah supporters, rich and poor. Through reported conversations, she creates a vivid picture of 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 structural, medical and mental health problems, yet it is also bursting with political engagement and underwritten by an intense enjoyment of family life.

Typically, the ruined landscapes and epic tragedies in Murphy’s latest nonfiction account are reserved for postapocalyptic novels. But in Palestine’s infamous Gaza Strip, Ireland’s beloved octogenarian travel writer exposes harsh truths that are often stranger than fiction. Using a combination of history and her personal experiences, Murphy uncovers the intricate social and political realities of the Gazan people that are often glossed over by headlines. On a series of day-trips that range from the quietly tragic to the abjectly horrifying, she visits extended families living in squalor, sheltering in and around their bombed-out homes and desperately trying to keep a few olive trees alive as a symbol of hope. As children starve, rich patrons at a fine restaurant nearby use precious lemons to clean their hands between courses, and every desk at an oil-funded school needlessly bears its own electric pencil sharpener. Although Murphy’s occasional lead-thick, date-heavy lectures on history aren’t the best introduction to Palestine, the light she sheds on one of the world’s greatest humanitarian crises is as moving as it is invaluable. --Adam Morgan