The Nomad - by Isabelle Eberhardt (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This book tells the fascinating tale of a character like no other--Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) came to be known as the ultimate enigma and representative of everything that seemed dangerous in nineteenth-century society.

In her short life Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) came to be known as the ultimate enigma and representative of everything that seemed dangerous in nineteenth-century society. Born the illegitimate daughter of an aristocratic Russian emigree she was a cross-dresser and sensualist, an experienced drug-taker and a transgressor of boundaries: a European reborn in the desert as an Arab and Muslim, a woman who reinvented herself as a man, wandering the Sahara on horseback. A profoundly lonely individual for all her numerous sexual adventures, she roused controversy and was loved and hated in equal measure. A mysterious attempt was made on her life and even her eventual death was ambiguous: she drowned in the desert at the age of twenty-seven. La bonne nomade, Isabelle's diaries, is a fascinating account of her strange and passionate nomadic lifestyle; an evocative and deeply personal record of her torments, her search for inspiration as a writer, her spirituality and the intense color and fire of her living.

Review Quotes

"A rich...fragmented chunk of pure romantic agony...Most travel books just arrive. This one has a much more powerful impact because it's about longing-for the Algerian soldier Eberhardt loves, for spiritual revelation, for a simple, wandering life with just a horse and 'a few servants barely more complicated than my mount.'...What's particularly striking is how her impossible passions break against the conventions of her time, conventions of writing as well as living."

"Greatest Travel Books of All Time."--Conde Nast Traveler

"Its most interesting passages are the letters she wrote during the trial of a man who had stabbed her, a man she was determined to defend despite his obvious guilt...[Eberhardt] rites articulately about her conversion to Islam, and shows a thoughtful understanding of French-African politics."

"This slimmed-down edition of her diaries makes riveting reading, and throws light on a desert world that remains obscured by bigotry and ignorance."