Desert Soul: A John Murray Journey

Description

INTRODUCED BY WILLIAM ATKINS, author of The Immeasurable World 'I am merely an eccentric, a dreamer who wishes to live far from the civilized world, as a free nomad.' Isabelle Eberhardt's writing chronicles, in passionate prose, her travels in French colonial North Africa at the turn of the 20th century. Often dressed in male clothing and assuming a man's name, she worked as a war correspondent, married a Muslim non-commissioned officer, converted to Islam and survived an assassination attempt, all before dying in a flash flood at the age of 27. Desert Soul brings together her 'Wanderings' and 'The Daily Journals', detailing the ecstatic highs and the depressive lows of her short but unique and extraordinary life.

Isabelle Eberhardt was born in 1877 in Switzerland. Already multilingual (French, German and Russian), she began studying Arabic language and Islamic culture and eventually converted to Islam, joining a Qadiriyya Sufi brotherhood. She died at the age of twenty-seven in a flash flood in the desert town of Ain Sefra, Algeria.