Isabelle

Isabelle Eberhardt was a brilliant young writer who died at the age of 27 in 1904. She lived her short life to the full, always searching for an identity and a cause. She found both of these in the desert among the Arab people. She lived experimentally, cross-dressing, taking many lovers, marrying an Arab sergeant, becoming addicted to hashish. She died in a flash flood at a desert outpost and there is some question that her death was suicide. This biography tries to makes sense of a life full of contradictions, drawing on previously unpublished letters and diaries. Isabelle Eberhardt was an extraordinary woman, who refused to be bound by the conventions of her time and the society in which she lived. Perhaps the greatest tribute she was paid was to have a street named after her in her adopted city, Algiers, where only a few European names survive.