In accordance with our meta agreement to have topic challenges and a later meta agreement to have topic challenges lasting for two months and overlapping by one month, it is time to announce the June–July 2022 topic challenge.
Based on the number of votes (+5), the next topic challenge of the year 2022 will be
the works of Isabelle Eberhardt
What's a topic challenge?
See the meta posts linked above, and also this main Meta post. In short, during June and July 2022 you are invited to try to read at least one work by the Swiss explorer and author Isabelle Eberhardt and ask questions about it.
Participation is not obligatory in any sense, and questions on other works are more than welcome during June and July too; they just won't count as part of this topic challenge.
How can I take part?
By getting hold of the one or more works by Isabelle Eberhardt Singer and asking good questions about it (or them). Questions about these works should be tagged with isabelle-eberhardt, french-literature and a tag for the work's title (for book-length works). We'll keep a list of all such questions in an answer to this meta post.
Below is Tsundoku's presentation:
The Swiss explorer and author Isabelle Eberhardt (1877 – 1904) led a short but eventful life. The illegitimate daughter of a Russian anarchist and a member of the Russian aristocracy, she grew up in Switzerland, where she learnt French, German, Russian, Italian, Latin, Greek and classical Arabic. She began wearing male clothing at a young age, moved to Algeria in 1897, converted to Islam, married an Algerian soldier in 1901, survived an assassination attempt and died in a flash flood at the age of 27.
Posthumously, she was seen as an early advocate of feminism and decolonisation. Most of her writings were published after her death and include the following:
- Dans l'ombre chaude de l'Islam (1906; English translation: In the Shadow of Islam),
- Trimardeur (1922)
- Pages d'Islam (1920),
- Ecrits sur le sable (1988; selections from this volume and Pages d'Islam are available in English in The Oblivion Seekers, translated by Paul Bowles),
- Collected works in English translation: Writings from the Sand, Volume 1 and Writings from the Sand, Volume 2 (University of Nebraska Press, 2012, 2014, respectively),
- The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt (Interlinks Books, 2003; previously published by Virago Press).
Isabelle Eberhardt was the subject of several biographies and non-fiction works:
- The Destiny of Isabelle Eberhardt (1954) by Cecily Mackworth,
- The Wilder Shores of Love (1954) by Lesley Blanch,
- La couronne de sable, vie d'Isabelle Eberhardt (1967) by Françoise d'Eaubonne,
- Isabelle (2006) by Annette Kobak.
What's next?
- Vote for the next topic challenge (July–August), or propose your own!