The Nomad

Isabelle Eberhardt was born in 1877. She was “a crossdresser and sensualist, an experienced drug taker and a transgressor of boundaries”. Born in Switzerland, she crossed the Sahara Desert on horseback dressed as a male marabout, driven by a hunger for nomadic adventures, and for love. Isabelle’s evocative diaries are intense, beautifully written, self-centred and dramatic, occasionally very funny. She fell madly in love with the Sahara, was accused of being a spy, married a young Algerian soldier, and drowned in a desert flash flood at the age of 27. This book is about a short life that burned radiantly… show more.

Isabelle Eberhardt was born in Switzerland in 1877, and against all odds made her way, solo, to Algeria in the 1890s, where she converted to Islam, dressed as a young man, and travelled widely. But this is just the headline—her life was full of lovers, both open and clandestine, assassination attempts, and remarkable adventures. She died without having published anything, at the age of 27, in a flash flood. But she left voluminous diaries and other manuscripts, which were published posthumously and translated a number of times. One of the most intrepid of the Victorian women travelers, she wrote on… show more.