Dervla Murphy was from Waterford, in the Republic of Ireland. She spent several decades of her life traversing countries and continents, usually with just a bicycle, and often with her daughter, who was aged from four to early adulthood. I admire her prose for conveying situations like they really were, but frequently with a dead pan observation at the end of the paragraph. These wry twists often take you by surprise.
Dervla Murphy died in 2023. She was aged 90.
Muddling through in Madagascar (1985)
“Several Malagasy had warned us that their capital is now a suppurating mass of pick-pockets, muggers and cut-throats. We doubted this; the Zoma has its share of professional pickpockets, but there is no nastiness in the city’s atmosphere by day or night – no undercurrents of vicious violence or anti-Vazaha resentment, no vulgar whistling or winking or jostling in response to an attractive young girl. The innate Malagasy dignity makes Tana seem truly civilised, whatever may be the state of the drains.”
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