{"product_id":"2026200016225-secondhand-a-place-apart","title":"A Place Apart","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Good\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Good\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt a time when Northern Ireland was synonymous with conflict, division, and despair, Dervla Murphy did what few outsiders dared — she cycled into the heart of the Troubles, talking to ordinary people on both sides of the sectarian divide with disarming candour and remarkable courage. A Place Apart chronicles her intimate journeys through Ulster in the late 1970s, presenting a portrait of a deeply fractured society through the voices of farmers, priests, paramilitaries, and housewives, all navigating lives shadowed by fear and history. Murphy's method is resolutely human: she argues that no political framework can substitute for the act of simply listening, and the result is a document of extraordinary empathy and moral clarity.\n\nWritten in Murphy's characteristically lucid and unsparing prose, the work sits at the intersection of travel writing and political reportage, illuminating the psychological landscape of a community as much as its geography. Her outsider-insider status as an Irish woman from the Republic lends the narrative a unique tension — familiar enough to gain trust, yet distant enough to retain perspective. Decades on, A Place Apart endures as essential reading for anyone seeking to understand not just Northern Ireland, but the universal human cost of entrenched ideology — and the quiet, stubborn hope that persists beneath it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49342769496283,"sku":"2026200016225-SECONDHAND","price":10.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/0ee0a6f4-2e7a-45ea-9d8b-cf6bc754211a.png?v=1790048890","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026200016225-secondhand-a-place-apart","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}