The Immortal Journeys of Isabelle Eberhardt: A Biography

“Inspiring, exquisitely researched, and deftly written. I loved it.” —Elizabeth Gilbert, author, Eat, Pray, Love In this powerful new biography, the radical adventuress Isabelle Eberhardt emerges as a brilliant modern figure who lived on her own terms—crossing boundaries of gender, faith, empire, and identity. In The Immortal Journeys of Isabelle Eberhardt, eminent literary scholar Hédi A. Jaouad offers a bold reexamination of the Swiss-born writer and adventurer whose short life (1877–1904) has long been romanticized, misread, or exoticized. Jaouad explores Eberhardt’s spatial existence—dizzyingly mobile, vividly immersive—from a precocious outcast in Geneva to a shape-shifting wanderer in colonial North Africa who lived disguised as an Arab man, converted to Islam, joined a Sufi brotherhood, and fiercely challenged the moral and political boundaries of her time. As Publishers Weekly raved, “Once dismissed as an eccentric, Eberhardt emerges here as a visionary who embodied the spirit of adventure through her nonconformist life.