About the Author

Dervla Murphy was born in Dublin in 1931. Her mother was invalided by arthritis and Dervla spent years caring for her, 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. Visit Dervla's website here

Reviews

'I am filled with admiration for her courage, resource, good nature and unselfconsciousness ... the charm of spontaneity and the ring of absolute truth.' Irish Times'This vivid journal ... would have delighted Cervantes with its almost incredible surprises: a valley full of birds the size of butterflies and butterflies as big as robins; a village where the cattle eat apricots and the villagers eat clover ...' The New Yorker

Here is the first American appearance of a book by Irish travel writer Murphy. Originally published in 1965, it is the diary of her bicycle trek from Dunkirk, across Europe, through Iran and Afghanistan, over the Himalayas to Pakistan and India. Murphy's immediate rapport with the people she alights among is vibrant and appealing and makes her travelogue unique. Venturing aloneaccompanied only by her bicycle, which she dubs Rozthe indomitable Murphy not only survives daunting physical rigors but gleans considerable enjoyment in getting to know peoples who were then even more remote than they are now. Overlook will also soon publish in uniform editions Murphy's Eight Feet in the Andes, The Waiting Land and On a Shoestring to Coorg. (March 21)