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Isabelle: The Life of Isabelle Eberhardt

An illustrated biography of Isabelle Eberhardt who, although she died young, became a legend in her own lifetime. Using her diaries and many previously unpublished letters, the author tells of her childhood in Geneva, her adventures in the North African desert and her identification with the Arabs. The film rights of this book have been sold.

From Publishers Weekly:

This captivating biography describes a turn-of-the-century Russian adventurer who was drawn by her romance with Islam to travel throughout north Africa, writing about the lives of the colonial French and local Arabs . Her colorful career ended abruptly in death at the age of 27 in a torrential flash flood that struck a remote hillside garrison in Algeria. Born in 1877 in Geneva, Eberhardt bore the maiden name of her mother, who had left Russia and her elderly husband, a general, five years earlier to go to Switzerland with her children's tutor, an anarchist. Never sure of her identity, Eberhardt embraced a series of disguises as a teenager and afterward, taking a series of male noms de plume and dressing as a man, which eased her way into the tents and Moslem monasteries of the desert. What was not in question was her sexuality, which was decidedly hetero: Eberhardt's fondness for "nights of love" culminated in marriage to an Arab officer in the French colonial cavalry. In this well-researched book, Kobak, a British writer who translated Eberhardt's only published novel, Vagabond , skillfully weaves brief excerpts from her subject's work into her riveting story.

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 258
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780394576916
  • Genres
  • biography, travel, history
  • Release date
  • 1989