ISABELLE

Subtitled A Story in Shots, this trim "novel" is in fact a screenplay whose scenes describe the brief, impassioned life of 19th-century traveler and adventuress Isabelle Eberhardt. Its three "Acts" dramatize Isabelle's rebellion against her emotional (Russian) family, escape to Marseilles and North Africa, then sojourns in the Sahara, marriage to an Algerian military officer, and early death. This quirky volume, which is sparsely but handsomely illustrated with its subject's own line drawings, is flawed by occasional Middle Eastern mystical fatuousness, but nevertheless offers a crisp, intriguing portrait of an extraordinarily enigmatic and interesting woman.