Customer Reviews

The Nomad: The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The unusual life and bizarre death of Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) remains a mystery. Dressing as a man, she traveled through Saharan Africa and drowned -- in the desert -- at age 27, which only emphasizes the uniqueness of the written record she left behind. Unlike the works of other desert adventurers such as Sir Richard Burton and T. E. Lawrence, Eberhardt's diary never clarifies why she endured these hardships, or why her life was such a complex tangle that there was an attempt on her life shortly before she drowned. Her unsettling story of gender deception, unaccompanied travel in Islamic society, and unresolved death is so far out of cultural norms that her story is seldom told, and makes this diary all the more intriguing.

This is a book I remembered for 30 years and went back one day recently to find. I was not disappointed although I can see why this book appealed to me so strongly as a 20 year old. Isabelle is an amazing writer. Like the writers of haiku, Isabelle captures the beauty of the desert around her and her feelings about her life in so few words and yet so beautifully. Her love of her adopted country and religion season her view and experience of life. One might wish she had had a happier time of it or been a little better at making a living, but overall this brief book is an amazing contribution to the world by a very unusual person. I highly recommend it.

It is such a pity that Isabelle Eberhadt is so little known because there is something about her that can be found in all of us.

She was a free thinking, independent woman at a time when it was hardly the thing to do. She converted to Islam by her own free will but remained her own person, she did not conform to an image of what Islam should be or what others thought it should be nor did she just convert and then melt into the mass of her fellow co-religionists.

She maintained much of her anarchist upbringing and lead a life that was free from and restraints. She endered the Qadiri Sufi order and seemed to have taken the order seriously practicing the prayers that she was ordered to perform.

She travelled deep into Algeria and wrote of the land and its people with a style that reflects her own free spirit. She would not be confined by anyone and perhaps it was that which brought about an attempt on her life and the anger of the colonial powers who ruled Algeria.

She lead a lonely life but seemed to have had several partners. Her life was full of contradictions and this book, her diaries reflects all of that. The life of a young woman who would not be restrained neither by the times that she lived in, the culture that she was from nor the religion that she had chosen to convert to. This book captures the wild mystery of a life that was lived both in the deserts of Africa and amongst the cities of Europe.

A beutiful book recomended to anyone who still has the spirit of travel or the love of the writings of someone who chose to life life as they wished to live it.

I agree totally with one of the other reviewers that this is pretty bad. I too, usually enjoy reading and learning about women of the Victorian era that went and did things out of the norm or traveled to exotic locals solo which was also at the time considered not proper. But this, this is just pointless. These rambling essays and random thoughts are so disjointed, uninteresting, all over the place chronologically and half the time just simply make no sense at all. This is the second book of Eberhardts journal notes that I've read, this one I just couldnt finish. I regret ordering all of her books at once and now do not even plan on reading the others. As I said in the other review that I did for Eberhardts "Prisoner of Dunes', if one publisher put all the books into one and put her thoughts or essays in chronological order it would at least present better. However, these entries are just so unimportant, uninteresting, and offer dull, boring, trivial information that has the reader fast asleep. I absolutely love and devour travel narrative books written by or about adventures in the Middle East, but I just could not wade through this drivel. I was highly disappointed after eagerly awaiting to read them, and often while reading kept thinking "what is the point of all this?". I plan to resell all these books I bought and hope to recoup some of my money back.

I did not finish the book. A lot of it seemed to me like the typical journal entries of a young woman, a lot of soul searching, romantic thoughts, thoughts about being different...One of the phrases that are repeated over and over again: "I have to learn how to think..." It's probably just me, but I started to get really annoyed by that statement.
In my opinion these diaries are just too personal, too intimate and not significant enough to be published.

I expected to really enjoy this book as I found the subject fascinating and new to me. Unfortunately, the stilted writing and the lack of substance made it unreadable. I think a book about this woman's life with quotes interjected would be more interesting than this rambling collection of thoughts. I'm very disappointed.

I can't put my finger on it but there was something about Isabelle Eberhardt that just made my skin crawl. I didn't like her as a person and never really got to care about her or what happened to her. It's strange because normally I love this kind of book about unconventional women living outside of society's expected norms for them, but this woman, I just did not like!