Book description
Take a three-generation family holiday in Cuba in the company of
Dervla Murphy, her daughter and three young granddaughters and you
have a Swallows-and-Amazons-like adventure in the Caribbean as they
trek into the hills and along the coast as a family, camping out on
empty beaches beneath the stars and relishing the ubiquitous Cuban
hospitality. But this is no more than the joyful start of a
fully-fledged quest to understand the unique society created by the
Cuban Revolution. For Dervla returns alone to explore the mountains,
coastal swamps and decaying cities, investigating the experience of
modern Cuba with her particular, candid curiosity. Through her own
research and through conversations with Fidelistas and their critics
alike, The Island That Dared builds a complex picture of a people
struggling to retain their identity in the face of the insistent
hostility of the government of the United States.
Dervla Murphy was born on 28 November 1931 of parents whose
families were both settled in Dublin as far back as can be traced. Her
grandfather and most of his family were involved in the Irish
Republican movement. Her father was appointed Waterford County
Librarian in 1930 after three years internment in Wormwood Scrubs
prison and seven years at the Sorbonne. Her mother was invalided by
arthritis when Dervla was one year old. She was educated at the
Ursuline Convent in Waterford until she was fourteen, when, because of
the wartime shortage of servants, she left to keep house for her
father and to nurse her mother. Dervla did this for sixteen years with
occasional breaks bicycling on the Continent. Her mother's death left
her free to go farther afield and in 1963 she cycled to India. There
she worked with Tibetan refugee children before returning home after a
year to write her first two books. Full Tilt was published in 1965 and
over twenty other travel books have followed. She still lives in
County Waterford. Her daughter, Rachel, and three granddaughters live
in Italy and join Dervla on her travels when possible.
