The award winning travel writer Dervla Murphy turns 90 on Sunday 28th November. Stanfords wishes her a very happy birthday.
Irish Examiner News Picture 01-10-2011 Saturday Social Page. Travel writer Dervla Murphy at her home in Lismore, Co Waterford. Picture: Dan Linehan
Dervla Murphy has won worldwide praise for her writing and has been described as a ‘travel legend’ and ‘the First Lady of Irish cycling’. In March she joined Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, Jan Morris, Colin Thubron and Paul Theroux and became a recipient of the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing.
Our Book of the Month for August, from the winner of the Nan Shepherd Prize, takes us from London to New Zealand, Shanghai to Malaysia via a lyrical, poetic essay collection that blends memoir with powerful writing on the natural world.
Home is many people and places and languages, some separated by oceans.
In our Book of the Month for July, Londoner Tharik Hussain sets off with his wife and young daughters around the Western Balkans, home to the largest indigenous Muslim population in Europe, and explores the regions of Eastern Europe where Islam has shaped places and people for more than half a millennium. Encountering blonde-haired, blue-eyed Muslims, visiting mystical Islamic lodges clinging to the side of mountains, and praying in mosques older than the Sistine Chapel, he paints a picture of a hidden Muslim Europe, a vibrant place with a breathtaking history, spellbinding culture and unique identity.
Minarets in The Mountains, the first English travel narrative by a Muslim writer on this subject, also explores the historical roots of European Islamophobia. Tharik and his family learn lessons about themselves and their own identity as Britons, Europeans and Muslims. Following in the footsteps of renowned Ottoman traveller Evliya Celebi, they remind us that Europe is as Muslim as it is Christian, Jewish or pagan.
Like William Dalrymple’s In Xanadu, this is a vivid reimagining of a region’s cultural heritage, unveiling forgotten Muslim communities, empires and their rulers; and like Kapka Kassabova’s Border, it is a quest that forces us to consider what makes up our own identities, and more importantly, who decides?
Watch Tharik Hussain introduce Minarets in the Mountains.
In our Book of the Month for May, I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain, Anita Sethi invites us on journey of reclamation through the natural landscapes of the North, brilliantly exploring identity, nature, place and belonging. Beautifully written and truly inspiring, I Belong Here heralds a powerful and refreshing new voice in nature writing.
Launched in 2015, the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards (ESTWA) seek to celebrate the best travel writing, and travel writers, in the world.
Titles have been shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year in association with the Authors’ Club for their innovative and/or literary merit with content which is relevant, useful or inspiring to travellers.
