Isabelle - The Life of Isabelle Eberhardt by Annette Kobak

 I was not familiar with Eberhardt until her name came up in Tav Falco's cover of "Old Fashioned Morphine" and that intrigued us enough to research the woman. We came across this biography before finding any of her own writings but we wanted to learn of her life, so we picked this up.

Isabelle's life was confusing and intriguing and complicated right from the start - born in Switzerland to the daughter of Russian aristocracy and her lover, a priest-turned-atheist anarchist, who was brought into the family as a tutor while Isabelle's mother was married to a Russian general. Just keeping her family ties straight is hard enough, but then she begins writing under a male pseudonym, started cross-dressing, moved to Algeria and began a long love affair with Africa where she adopted a male persona and name, converted to Islam, was accused of being a spy, survived an assassination attempt and numerous illnesses, was immersed in drugs'n'alcohol, married and eventually died in a random, unusual flash flood! 

There is an immense amount of political intrigue throughout and innumerable characters that she meets over her short 27 years on the planet, and while she was published during her lifetime, she became well known posthumously with the release of novel and diaries from a benefactor, Victor Barrucand, who she worked with towards the end of her life. 

While Kobak had access to previously unseen writings of Eberhardt's, and the story is pretty darn fascinating, the writing doesn't not truly flow and is not a compelling read, unfortunately. It is still worth reading for the information and there are plenty of quotes from Isabelle, but I would not say that this is a definitive story. I will be looking for more about and from this subject, though.