The Immortal Journeys of Isabelle Eberhardt: A Biography

Jaouad (Browning upon Arabia), professor emeritus of French and Francophone studies at Skidmore College, delivers a captivating biography of Swiss writer and explorer Isabelle Eberhardt. Born in Geneva in 1877, Eberhardt was the illegitimate daughter of a Russian noblewoman and, allegedly, her children’s tutor, an ex-priest affectionately known as “Vava.” Eberhardt had an unconventional upbringing, encouraged by Vava to defy gender norms by dressing as a boy and to study subjects like Arabic, literature, and history. Inspired by her studies, she became interested in Algeria and published, under a male pseudonym, short stories about North Africa based on correspondences with her brother and acquaintances who lived there. Jaouad chronicles Eberhardt’s eventual move to Algeria, where she dressed as a man and converted to Islam. Her lifestyle led French colonial authorities to suspect her of being a spy, and she was nearly killed in an assassination attempt before dying at age 27 in a flash flood in Algeria. Joauad doesn’t portray Eberhardt as merely an outcast but takes care to contextualize and demystify her life. Once dismissed as an eccentric, Eberhardt emerges here as a visionary who embodied the spirit of adventure through her nonconformist life. It’s a vivid portrait of a revolutionary. (May)