Criminal

by Isabelle Eberhardt

A record of all the beauty, misery, and degradation of a life fully embraced. This is a collection of the writings of Isabelle Eberhardt, gender deviant, kif smoking, sufi anarchist who traverses the Saharan desert, battles colonialism and records it all in poetic prose. A gorgeously designed and printed small pamphlet from the always-superlative Eberhardt Press. (via justseeds.org)

40 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Isabelle Eberhardt was a Swiss-Algerian explorer and writer who lived and travelled extensively in North Africa. For the time she was an extremely liberated individual who rejected conventional European morality in favour of her own path and that of Islam. Dressed as a man, calling herself Si Mahmoud Essadi, Eberhardt travelled in Arab society, with a freedom she could not otherwise have experienced. She died in a flash flood in the desert at the age of 27.

Reviews

[Gea · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating utterly original woman with a beautiful, utterly original perspective. Gorgeous writing here, radical ideas.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of eight short essays/diary entries by Isabelle Eberhardt. I had never heard of her before picking up this pamphlet. While the introduction points that some of her writings and attitudes were quite problematic, those don't appear in the selected texts. Less overtly political and more a few quick, and often beautiful, descriptive accounts of a short, but fully-lived life.

[K.m. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brief collection, meditations on her life in Islamic North Africa. Descriptions of her wanderlust, her impatience with and yet jealousy of more settled souls and her description of an afternoon prayer particularly struck me.