Transylvania and Beyond: A Travel Memoir [Hardcover]

Dervla Murphy (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Hardcover; 1st edition (December 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879514728
• ISBN-13: 978-0879514723
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,739,118 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #56 in Books > Travel > Europe > Romania & Moldova

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Transylvania on a daily basis, November 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Transylvania and Beyond: A Travel Memoir (Hardcover)

A fairly descriptive diary of a journey to many interesting places in Transylvania, a very multicultural section of the world with an exciting history. The journey of the author itself is quite adventurous, and we get a pretty good glimpse of the daily lives of the people who live there. My only problem with the book was that the author often seemed to be prejudiced against Hungarians (or Magyars),in fact at some point she calls the Magyars (as a whole) arrogant psychopaths. There is quite a bit of ethnic tension in Transylvania even today, it would be helpful if someone was able to give an unbiased account of the situation.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dervla Murphy: Romania unvarnished - make mine a double., January 8, 2004

By 

Adrian Casillas (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Transylvania and Beyond (Paperback)

Dervla Murphy travels by bicycle, mule, or foot, then comes back to tell all - warts and all. She has courage and integrity - and a disarmingly unmannered charm - and deploys these gifts in each of her books to capture the immediacy and difficult beauty of landscapes and peoples often on the wrong side of "progress".

From her first day - robbed of her belongings, save for a couple bottles of Irish whiskey - Ms Murphy takes the reader on a journey into the tormented soul of Transylvania, a beautiful land of forests and mountains, fought over by Hungarians, Germans, Szekelys, and Romanians for centuries. She shares her impressions of land and people, not with an air of authority, but rather with a sense of candour and compassion. Perhaps too abrupt, sometimes wrong-headedly opinionated, but a single cussed Murphy sentence as often as not trumps a bookshelf-load of expert opinions.

If you do NOT enjoy unbridled enthusiasm, a thirst for adventure and local hooch, obstinate cussedness in the face of know-it-alls and tiresome do-gooders, then do NOT read these books. If you DO enjoy these traits, and wish to spend a very pleasant evening or two with an engaging woman, do read Dervla Murphy's books (by all means start with "Full Tilt", her classic first book).

5.0 out of 5 stars Transylvania, September 26, 2011

By 

gailromania - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Transylvania and Beyond: A Travel Memoir (Hardcover)

Love reading this book again and again. Each time I recognize scenes from new places I travel. Have purchased this book for friends who love Romania as much as I do.