THE IMMORTAL JOURNEYS OF ISABELLE EBERHARDT

A brief, daring life.

Literary scholar Jaouad offers an intimate biography of the enigmatic Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904), a Swiss heiress and renegade: adventurer, nomad, war correspondent, and writer. The daughter of a well-born Russian woman who eloped with her children’s tutor, Isabelle grew up on a rural estate outside of Geneva, where she felt smothered by the dull surroundings. Envying her two older brothers, both of whom joined the French Foreign Legion, she dreamed of escape. When she was 17, her stepfather sent her to Geneva to broaden her education; there, she gravitated to the “exotic and the erotic,” and the city’s cosmopolitan atmosphere further fueled her longing for adventure. She found a kindred spirit in her brother, Augustin, a rebellious and apparently troubled young man who was then in Algeria and urged her to join him. Eager to “leap into the unknown,” Isabelle deemed an “uncertain future with Augustin” was preferable to life in Switzerland. Arab lands and culture lured her, but adventure was not her only goal: She sought spiritual enlightenment, first converting to Islam (she was convinced she had been born a Muslim) and later pursuing Sufi wisdom. And she sought a new identity, taking a male Arab pseudonym and often wearing male attire. Her mother, a renegade in her own right, accompanied her to Algeria, but after she died suddenly in late 1897, Isabelle, distraught, returned home. By the next year, she and her stepfather once again left for North Africa, this time joining Augustin in Tunisia. Jaouad recounts the dangerous intrigues of Isabelle’s last years, until her untimely death in a flash flood. A daring journalist, she went beyond simply reporting to offer vividly detailed ethnological essays about the desert nomads among whom she traveled. Jaouad’s brisk retelling of her life captures her intrepid spirit.

A colorful, empathetic portrait.