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The Oblivion Seekers and other writings
"One of the strangest documents that a woman has given to the world."
Cecily Mackworth
Isabelle Eberhardt was an unusual woman, and we're fortunate to glimpse her unique meld of European angst and Algerian verve. We're equally lucky for Paul Bowles's sympathetic, robust biography that precedes Eberhardt's 13 short stories. Born in Switzerland in 1877 and dead by 1904 in Algeria, Eberhardt spent her childhood dressed as a boy and her short adulthood living a journalist's life in Africa, full of luck and illness, passion and melancholy. From that intricate mix, her stories set in the dusty heat of Algerian villages breathe and sigh and radiate the culture and conflicts of her chosen home.
Cecily Mackworth
Isabelle Eberhardt was an unusual woman, and we're fortunate to glimpse her unique meld of European angst and Algerian verve. We're equally lucky for Paul Bowles's sympathetic, robust biography that precedes Eberhardt's 13 short stories. Born in Switzerland in 1877 and dead by 1904 in Algeria, Eberhardt spent her childhood dressed as a boy and her short adulthood living a journalist's life in Africa, full of luck and illness, passion and melancholy. From that intricate mix, her stories set in the dusty heat of Algerian villages breathe and sigh and radiate the culture and conflicts of her chosen home.
88 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1975
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About the author
Isabelle Eberhardt
59 books160 followersIsabelle 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 94 reviews
July 31, 2021
It was daylight. From behind the mountains shone a red dawn, making bloody streaks on the calm surface of the sea, and dyeing the water with golden splotches. The faint mist that still hung above the ravines of Mustapha disappeared, and the countryside came nearer, huge, soft, serene. No broken Jines, no clash of color. One would have said that the earth, lying back in exhaustion, still permitted itself a sad and slightly sensual smile.
*
She remembered, as one recalls a particularly beautiful dream, a time passed on open slopes flooded
with golden sunlight. She had been there, below the great mountains split by gorges that opened them here
and there to the blue warmth of the horizon. There were whole forests of pine and cork-oak, dark and
threatening, and dense thickets whose hot breath rose as mist in the transparent autumn air, or in the brutal
drunkenness o f spring. Green myrtle and oleander lined the banks o f the peaceful streams that wound through the fig orchards and the grey olive groves. The translucent ferns were like smoke hanging above the bloody streaks of broken boulders by the waterfalls. The streams rushed by, murmuring in the summer sunlight, or roaring in the terrible winter nights. There she had played, breathing the healthy air, watching the sheep, her strong limbs almost naked in the sunlight.
*
It is the time of evening when the rays of the setting sun pass through an air already cooled by the first breath of night, while the mud walls give off the heat they have stored all during the day. Indoors it is like being in an oven. You must be outside, and feel the touch of the first shadows. And for a long time I lie idly stretched out staring up into the depths of the sky, listening to the last sounds from the zaouiya and the ksar: doors creaking as they swing heavily shut, the neighing of horses, and the bleat of sheep on the roofs. And the little African donkeys bray, a sound as sad as protracted sobbing. And the sharp thin voices of the black women.
*
She remembered, as one recalls a particularly beautiful dream, a time passed on open slopes flooded
with golden sunlight. She had been there, below the great mountains split by gorges that opened them here
and there to the blue warmth of the horizon. There were whole forests of pine and cork-oak, dark and
threatening, and dense thickets whose hot breath rose as mist in the transparent autumn air, or in the brutal
drunkenness o f spring. Green myrtle and oleander lined the banks o f the peaceful streams that wound through the fig orchards and the grey olive groves. The translucent ferns were like smoke hanging above the bloody streaks of broken boulders by the waterfalls. The streams rushed by, murmuring in the summer sunlight, or roaring in the terrible winter nights. There she had played, breathing the healthy air, watching the sheep, her strong limbs almost naked in the sunlight.
*
It is the time of evening when the rays of the setting sun pass through an air already cooled by the first breath of night, while the mud walls give off the heat they have stored all during the day. Indoors it is like being in an oven. You must be outside, and feel the touch of the first shadows. And for a long time I lie idly stretched out staring up into the depths of the sky, listening to the last sounds from the zaouiya and the ksar: doors creaking as they swing heavily shut, the neighing of horses, and the bleat of sheep on the roofs. And the little African donkeys bray, a sound as sad as protracted sobbing. And the sharp thin voices of the black women.
May 12, 2017
Yazarın yaşamı tam bir başkaldırı. Erkek kılığına girip Afrika çöllerinde dolaşmış, takma ad alarak Cezayir'e yerleşmiş. Çölde araştırma ve keşif gezilerine katılmış. Bu kitap yazarın tek öykü kitabı, öykülerin çoğu kendi vatanı olmayan Afrika'da geçiyor ve insanların o dönemdeki yaşamlarını tüm gerçekliğiyle, oranın yerlisiymişçesine aktarıyor. Tek eleştirim dini öğelerin gereksiz yerlerde öykülere dahil olmasıydı.
Kitabın sonunda yazar kendini doğru bir şekilde anlatmak için yazdığı bir mektup var. "Hayatımda hiçbir şekilde siyasi bir rol üstlenmedim." diyor. Yazarın bakış açısına, hayatı yaşayış şekline bayıldım.
Alakarga yayınları yazarın Göçebe adı altında günlüklerini toplayacağız yazmış ama kitabın basımının üzerinden beş sene geçmiş. Hala yayın programında bulunuyorsa basılınca okumak isterim.
"Bir ev, bir aile, bir mülk veya kamusal bir görev sahibi olmak, belirli bir geçim yoluna sahip olmak ve sosyal makine içinde yararlı bir çark olmak... Bütün bunlar insanların büyük çoğunluğuna, entelektüeller ve hatta kendilerini bütünüyle özgürleştirmiş addedenlere bile, gereklilik hatta zaruret olarak görünür. Ancak, bu tür şeyler ötekilerle temastan, özellikle düzenli ve sürekli bir temastan doğan farklı bir tür kölelik biçimidir sadece."
Kitabın sonunda yazar kendini doğru bir şekilde anlatmak için yazdığı bir mektup var. "Hayatımda hiçbir şekilde siyasi bir rol üstlenmedim." diyor. Yazarın bakış açısına, hayatı yaşayış şekline bayıldım.
Alakarga yayınları yazarın Göçebe adı altında günlüklerini toplayacağız yazmış ama kitabın basımının üzerinden beş sene geçmiş. Hala yayın programında bulunuyorsa basılınca okumak isterim.
"Bir ev, bir aile, bir mülk veya kamusal bir görev sahibi olmak, belirli bir geçim yoluna sahip olmak ve sosyal makine içinde yararlı bir çark olmak... Bütün bunlar insanların büyük çoğunluğuna, entelektüeller ve hatta kendilerini bütünüyle özgürleştirmiş addedenlere bile, gereklilik hatta zaruret olarak görünür. Ancak, bu tür şeyler ötekilerle temastan, özellikle düzenli ve sürekli bir temastan doğan farklı bir tür kölelik biçimidir sadece."
January 31, 2017
Combined review of both In the Shadow of Islam and The Oblivion Seekers.
In the Shadow of Islam & The Oblivion Seekers are both collections of writing by another lady travel writer that I have encountered - Isabelle Eberhard.
Never heard of her? I had not either, but a quick look at her biography ensures that I will look at a more in-depth biography about her.
"ISABELLE EBERHARDT (1877–1904) was born in Geneva, the illegitimate daughter of a former Russian Orthodox priest and a part-Russian, part-German aristocratic mother. Her father was an anarchist and nihilist who was to convert to Islam, and his daughter’s life was to take similar dramatic turns before her tragically early death at the age of twenty-seven. Increasingly isolated from her family and her inheritance, she was plagued by emotional and financial problems, but she had a fierce will. From an early age she dressed as a man for the greater freedom this allowed, and she developed a literary talent and a gift for languages, including Arabic. Like her father Eberhardt became drawn to Islam. She converted while in Algeria with her mother. After her mother’s death she cut all ties with her family, called herself Si Mahmoud Essadi and travelled throughout North Africa. She became involved with Qadiriyya Sufi order, married an Algerian soldier, worked as a war reporter, helped the poor and needy and fought against the injustices of French colonial rule. She was also the victim of an assassination attempt but later successfully pleaded for the life of the man who attacked her. She openly rejected conventional European morality of the time, preferring to choose her own path, and drank alcohol, smoked marijuana and had numerous affairs. She died in a flash flood in Aïn Séfra, Algeria, in 1904."
Eberhardt, Isabelle. In The Shadow of Islam (Modern Classics) (Kindle Locations 25-32). Peter Owen Publishers. Kindle Edition.
In both collections, In the Shadow of Islam & The Oblivion Seekers, Eberhardt describes life in norther Africa, Algeria to be precise, from the point of someone actually living with the people at around 1900. She doesn't cling to any European perspectives she may hold and gives a voice to the people she encounters, their believes, their customs, their reasoning. She describes tribal rivalries, domestic issues, love, slavery, hardship, wealth - all of which seems to have its place in her settings. The stories are not connected and aren't really stories either. Rather they are vignettes of observations or conversations mixed with stories.
Because Eberhardt does not give the account from the perspective of a European traveller, but of someone who is searching for her own self, she does not judge. or at least, she pretends not to judge.
The stories truly are interesting. However, her writing is - lyrical as it is - does at times come across as too stylised to be a true account of her observations. Some poetic licence was no doubt at play.
When looking at both collections separately, In the Shadow of Islam is a better book. It contains one or two stories that are also in The Oblivion Seekers but I found the translation of the stories in In the Shadow of Islam to have a much better flow.
In a way this is surprising because The Oblivion Seekers has gathered more praise on account of the translation by Paul Bowles, which in my opinion is not warranted. I found Bowles translation hard to read.
In the Shadow of Islam - 3.5*
The Oblivion Seekers - 2.5*
In the Shadow of Islam & The Oblivion Seekers are both collections of writing by another lady travel writer that I have encountered - Isabelle Eberhard.
Never heard of her? I had not either, but a quick look at her biography ensures that I will look at a more in-depth biography about her.
"ISABELLE EBERHARDT (1877–1904) was born in Geneva, the illegitimate daughter of a former Russian Orthodox priest and a part-Russian, part-German aristocratic mother. Her father was an anarchist and nihilist who was to convert to Islam, and his daughter’s life was to take similar dramatic turns before her tragically early death at the age of twenty-seven. Increasingly isolated from her family and her inheritance, she was plagued by emotional and financial problems, but she had a fierce will. From an early age she dressed as a man for the greater freedom this allowed, and she developed a literary talent and a gift for languages, including Arabic. Like her father Eberhardt became drawn to Islam. She converted while in Algeria with her mother. After her mother’s death she cut all ties with her family, called herself Si Mahmoud Essadi and travelled throughout North Africa. She became involved with Qadiriyya Sufi order, married an Algerian soldier, worked as a war reporter, helped the poor and needy and fought against the injustices of French colonial rule. She was also the victim of an assassination attempt but later successfully pleaded for the life of the man who attacked her. She openly rejected conventional European morality of the time, preferring to choose her own path, and drank alcohol, smoked marijuana and had numerous affairs. She died in a flash flood in Aïn Séfra, Algeria, in 1904."
Eberhardt, Isabelle. In The Shadow of Islam (Modern Classics) (Kindle Locations 25-32). Peter Owen Publishers. Kindle Edition.
In both collections, In the Shadow of Islam & The Oblivion Seekers, Eberhardt describes life in norther Africa, Algeria to be precise, from the point of someone actually living with the people at around 1900. She doesn't cling to any European perspectives she may hold and gives a voice to the people she encounters, their believes, their customs, their reasoning. She describes tribal rivalries, domestic issues, love, slavery, hardship, wealth - all of which seems to have its place in her settings. The stories are not connected and aren't really stories either. Rather they are vignettes of observations or conversations mixed with stories.
Because Eberhardt does not give the account from the perspective of a European traveller, but of someone who is searching for her own self, she does not judge. or at least, she pretends not to judge.
The stories truly are interesting. However, her writing is - lyrical as it is - does at times come across as too stylised to be a true account of her observations. Some poetic licence was no doubt at play.
When looking at both collections separately, In the Shadow of Islam is a better book. It contains one or two stories that are also in The Oblivion Seekers but I found the translation of the stories in In the Shadow of Islam to have a much better flow.
In a way this is surprising because The Oblivion Seekers has gathered more praise on account of the translation by Paul Bowles, which in my opinion is not warranted. I found Bowles translation hard to read.
In the Shadow of Islam - 3.5*
The Oblivion Seekers - 2.5*
November 8, 2020
It was daylight. From behind the mountains shone a red dawn, making bloody streaks on the calm surface of the sea, and dyeing the water with golden splotches. The faint mist that still hung above the ravines of Mustapha disappeared, and the countryside came nearer, huge, soft, serene. No broken Jines, no clash of color. One would have said that the earth, lying back in exhaustion, still permitted itself a sad and slightly sensual smile.
*
She remembered, as one recalls a particularly beautiful dream, a time passed on open slopes flooded
with golden sunlight. She had been there, below the great mountains split by gorges that opened them here
and there to the blue warmth of the horizon. There were whole forests of pine and cork-oak, dark and
threatening, and dense thickets whose hot breath rose as mist in the transparent autumn air, or in the brutal
drunkenness o f spring. Green myrtle and oleander lined the banks o f the peaceful streams that wound through the fig orchards and the grey olive groves. The translucent ferns were like smoke hanging above the bloody streaks of broken boulders by the waterfalls. The streams rushed by, murmuring in the summer sunlight, or roaring in the terrible winter nights. There she had played, breathing the healthy air, watching the sheep, her strong limbs almost naked in the sunlight.
*
It is the time of evening when the rays of the setting sun pass through an air already cooled by the first breath of night, while the mud walls give off the heat they have stored all during the day. Indoors it is like being in an oven. You must be outside, and feel the touch of the first shadows. And for a long time I lie idly stretched out staring up into the depths of the sky, listening to the last sounds from the zaouiya and the
ksar: doors creaking as they swing heavily shut, the neighing of horses, and the bleat of sheep on the roofs. And the little African donkeys bray, a sound as sad as protracted sobbing. And the sharp thin voices of the black women.
*
She remembered, as one recalls a particularly beautiful dream, a time passed on open slopes flooded
with golden sunlight. She had been there, below the great mountains split by gorges that opened them here
and there to the blue warmth of the horizon. There were whole forests of pine and cork-oak, dark and
threatening, and dense thickets whose hot breath rose as mist in the transparent autumn air, or in the brutal
drunkenness o f spring. Green myrtle and oleander lined the banks o f the peaceful streams that wound through the fig orchards and the grey olive groves. The translucent ferns were like smoke hanging above the bloody streaks of broken boulders by the waterfalls. The streams rushed by, murmuring in the summer sunlight, or roaring in the terrible winter nights. There she had played, breathing the healthy air, watching the sheep, her strong limbs almost naked in the sunlight.
*
It is the time of evening when the rays of the setting sun pass through an air already cooled by the first breath of night, while the mud walls give off the heat they have stored all during the day. Indoors it is like being in an oven. You must be outside, and feel the touch of the first shadows. And for a long time I lie idly stretched out staring up into the depths of the sky, listening to the last sounds from the zaouiya and the
ksar: doors creaking as they swing heavily shut, the neighing of horses, and the bleat of sheep on the roofs. And the little African donkeys bray, a sound as sad as protracted sobbing. And the sharp thin voices of the black women.
April 1, 2017
‘The Oblivion Seekers’ is a series of vignettes by Isabelle Eberhardt, a triply obscure novelist, whose poetic style and eye for local colour and detail and ability to capture the acrid yet hypnagogic world of North Africa and the myriad of customs, beliefs and idiosyncrasies of Arab-Berber Islam deserves wider recognition.
A myriad of colours shimmers through the images described by Eberhardt, lightness and darkness coalesce and separate and sometimes merge into one beneath a mirage of imagery;
“Long and white, the road twists like a snake towards the far-off blue places, towards the bright edges of the earth. It burns in the sunlight, a dusty stripe between the wheat’s dull gold on one side, and the shimmering red hills and green-grey scrubs on the other.”
It is the disenfranchised and the outsider, the dregs of society who populate the short stories which make-up ‘The Oblivion Seekers’ , the torpid, lugubrious and often violent social dynamics of Algerian society are explored via the characters, all of whom long for something grander than the fate life has awarded them and who cling onto any solace they can find;
“As happens with love’s creatures, Achoura felt a new life being born within her. It seemed to her that never before had she really seen the sun turn the crests of the mountain gold, and never before watched the capricious play of light on the trees.”
If the world Eberhardt describes seems cruel and cold, then this is merely a reflection of life in colonial Algeria, of individuals whose hopes laboured under the insurmountable weight of oppression, yet Eberhardt is able to infuse with a sense of beauty and poetry.
A myriad of colours shimmers through the images described by Eberhardt, lightness and darkness coalesce and separate and sometimes merge into one beneath a mirage of imagery;
“Long and white, the road twists like a snake towards the far-off blue places, towards the bright edges of the earth. It burns in the sunlight, a dusty stripe between the wheat’s dull gold on one side, and the shimmering red hills and green-grey scrubs on the other.”
It is the disenfranchised and the outsider, the dregs of society who populate the short stories which make-up ‘The Oblivion Seekers’ , the torpid, lugubrious and often violent social dynamics of Algerian society are explored via the characters, all of whom long for something grander than the fate life has awarded them and who cling onto any solace they can find;
“As happens with love’s creatures, Achoura felt a new life being born within her. It seemed to her that never before had she really seen the sun turn the crests of the mountain gold, and never before watched the capricious play of light on the trees.”
If the world Eberhardt describes seems cruel and cold, then this is merely a reflection of life in colonial Algeria, of individuals whose hopes laboured under the insurmountable weight of oppression, yet Eberhardt is able to infuse with a sense of beauty and poetry.
June 17, 2016
Wonderful collection of mostly short stories, filled out with a few sketches, diary entries, and a letter. Eberhardt's writing throughout is threaded with a subtle-but-radiant strain of lyricism. Paul Bowles' translation here is exceptional and these stories with their often cruel desert settings and stoic sensibility bear more than a passing resemblance to his own work - while predating it by half a century.
4.5 stars
4.5 stars
March 12, 2018
Stories of life in the margins of society by a Swiss-Russian Muslim journalist who spent most of her life (altogether too short, she died during a flood at just 27 in 1904) traveling North Africa, whenever the French government, suspicious of her allegiances, wasn't barring her from the colonies. It may be that Eberhardt's own story is even more compelling than her writings, but they are all born up by clear, quietly lyrical prose and her perpetual rejection of the patriarchal bonds of colonial power and family.
June 26, 2010
The back of my copy of the book said "One of the strangest human documents that a woman has given to the world" -- Cecily Mackworth.
Maybe at the time it was. But it seems to me more like one of the strangest women who has ever given any documents to the world.
Here she is dressed in her typical moslem man attire (she dressed up as a man all her life). She was born in Switzerland, raised by a Russian nihilist father, and lived most of her life in Algeria and South Africa and occasionally France. Apparently the French government thought she was a spy, and went to great lengths to keep her out of their country, even though she was legally married to a frenchman.
She was a nomad, and pretty much wandered throughout her life, writing short journalistic/story pieces--mostly about the wandering lifestyle. The one novel she wrote was destroyed in a 1904 flash flood that also took her life at the age of 27.
The stories in this slim book are stories of people who struggle with freedom and convention. They also contain incredibly vivid descriptions of landscapes. She seems to have a strong sense of justice. In the story "Criminal", she says "Crime, particularly among the poor and down-trodden, is often a last gesture of freedom". She is a genuine independent thinker; though her stories aren't driven by thought, you get a sense of her originality through them.
Maybe at the time it was. But it seems to me more like one of the strangest women who has ever given any documents to the world.
Here she is dressed in her typical moslem man attire (she dressed up as a man all her life). She was born in Switzerland, raised by a Russian nihilist father, and lived most of her life in Algeria and South Africa and occasionally France. Apparently the French government thought she was a spy, and went to great lengths to keep her out of their country, even though she was legally married to a frenchman.
She was a nomad, and pretty much wandered throughout her life, writing short journalistic/story pieces--mostly about the wandering lifestyle. The one novel she wrote was destroyed in a 1904 flash flood that also took her life at the age of 27.
The stories in this slim book are stories of people who struggle with freedom and convention. They also contain incredibly vivid descriptions of landscapes. She seems to have a strong sense of justice. In the story "Criminal", she says "Crime, particularly among the poor and down-trodden, is often a last gesture of freedom". She is a genuine independent thinker; though her stories aren't driven by thought, you get a sense of her originality through them.
Above the gorges, scarcely moving their wings, hung the eagles, like golden nails affixed to the incandescent sky. He came to the true countryside... It was the month of July. Not even a strip of green remained on the land's exasperated palette. The pines, the pistachio trees and the palmettos were like blackish rust against the red earth. The dried-up river beds with their banks that seemed to have been drawn with sanguine made long gaping wounds in the landscape, revealing the gray bones of rock inside, among the slowly dying oleanders. The harvested fields gave a lion-colored tint to the hillsides. Little by little the colorless sky was killing everything.
May 11, 2008
I WISH I COULD GIVE THIS BOOK MORE STARS THAN FIVE! One of the most bizarre people living and writing EXACTLY where and how she wanted to WRITE! I have nothing but TOTAL admiration for Eberhardt and her work. Yet ANOTHER life cut entirely too short! To think that this genius writer wrote these remarkable stories, then was killed in a flash flood in the desert at age 28 is almost too painful to think about.
Hats off to the ever remarkable Paul Bowels for his translations, a writer who knew genius when it came his way.
BUY THIS BOOK FOR EVERYONE YOU KNOW!
CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com
Hats off to the ever remarkable Paul Bowels for his translations, a writer who knew genius when it came his way.
BUY THIS BOOK FOR EVERYONE YOU KNOW!
CAConrad
http://CAConrad.blogspot.com
January 23, 2022
Read this because Patti Smith recommended it.
Along with Rimbaud and the palm wine drinker, she seems recommend darkly poetic, comic journeys into exotic lands.
This is a collection of short stories that feel like individual diary entries from various individuals.
There’s a new beating heart in every story and each one is equally compelling.
Strongly recommended
Along with Rimbaud and the palm wine drinker, she seems recommend darkly poetic, comic journeys into exotic lands.
This is a collection of short stories that feel like individual diary entries from various individuals.
There’s a new beating heart in every story and each one is equally compelling.
Strongly recommended
Read
January 27, 2023Are these stories or essays? I prefer to think the latter, despite there being no real evidence of this, but that's beside the point -- stories, in the world Eberhardt describes, are a function of the mythic, and she describes a society in which the mystical and analogical world remained all-powerful. And in her magic-haunted desert, through her voice -- the voice of one of the world's great eccentrics -- I have the will to believe. Maybe that's because every caravanserai tale is so gorgeously rendered, so perfect in its imagery, that I couldn’t help but fall in love. This seems to be a common theme among writers both originally from and writing about the Maghreb. There seems to be some common strand of DNA I'm unfamiliar with here, and I appreciate it.
February 25, 2020
These beautifully written short pieces set in the Sahara read rather like ancient fables, which makes them a fun read. One ought not confuse them with serious ethnography, though, as Eberhardt's adoration of the indigenous population is deeply colored by orientalist romanticism. The book also has an excellent bio of the author (a peripatetic protofeminist crossdressing Russian muslim journalist!) by Paul Bowles, who clearly lifted Eberhardt's schtick for his own writing.
July 17, 2025
I’m not sure how I became aware of Isabelle Eberhardt, a recommendation I can’t recall, or maybe even something silly like a tweet I saw once. But as soon as my interest was piqued and I learned even just a little about her, I found myself completely enthralled, both with her writing and her life. It’s not like me to care too deeply about an author (not that I never do), but I am very much a proponent of work standing on its own beyond any cult of personality from a romantic or edgy life seemingly led. Then again, there are always exceptions. People who just lead such endlessly fascinating lives that you can’t help but be deservedly swept into their orbit. Eberhardt is definitely in this category for me and I knew almost immediately I would read maybe anything that remained that she had ever written.
And I was so ecstatic to find myself not disappointed in the least. Eberhardt writes wonderfully, and the prose in this short collection is some of the best I’ve read in a long, long time. I completely fell in love with the first story in this collection, ‘Outsider’, to the point where I would genuinely consider it among my favourite short stories of all time. My other favourites in this collection were ’Taalith’ and ‘The Rival’. Both of these had the most interesting stories, really more like deeply captivating little character studies, and some of the best writing in the book. Eberhardt’s descriptive language is genuinely unmatched and reading even small paragraphs of setting or other inconsequential detail just brought me so much deep joy.
This isn’t to say this collection is perfection from front to back, there are still some flaws and certainly some obvious pitfalls of the era are present too. Some stories read as simple little moral tales which at worst can feel a little obnoxious and at best are just a bit boring. There are also a few strange ones I couldn’t quite get a read on due to odd and outdated cultural attitudes, with ‘The Magician’ in particular making me feel jut that little bit uncomfortable. It's hard to damn someone too much over anachronistic values that are impossible for someone of a hundred years ago to adhere to, so I always took this with a pinch of salt.
Really, ‘The Oblivion Seekers’ is one of those books that it’s impossible for me to really write a particularly coherent and objective review of, because all I really want to do is gush. I just thought it was wonderful, truly. Eberhardt’s prose is among my favourite that I’ve read in the longest time and it’s this that made so much of ‘The Oblivion Seekers’ so unforgettable for me. Though travel writing (which is what most of Eberhardt’s work is classed as) isn’t always my favourite, I’m pretty sure from here I won’t be able to stop myself reading everything Eberhardt wrote that’s available. See you all on the other side!
And I was so ecstatic to find myself not disappointed in the least. Eberhardt writes wonderfully, and the prose in this short collection is some of the best I’ve read in a long, long time. I completely fell in love with the first story in this collection, ‘Outsider’, to the point where I would genuinely consider it among my favourite short stories of all time. My other favourites in this collection were ’Taalith’ and ‘The Rival’. Both of these had the most interesting stories, really more like deeply captivating little character studies, and some of the best writing in the book. Eberhardt’s descriptive language is genuinely unmatched and reading even small paragraphs of setting or other inconsequential detail just brought me so much deep joy.
This isn’t to say this collection is perfection from front to back, there are still some flaws and certainly some obvious pitfalls of the era are present too. Some stories read as simple little moral tales which at worst can feel a little obnoxious and at best are just a bit boring. There are also a few strange ones I couldn’t quite get a read on due to odd and outdated cultural attitudes, with ‘The Magician’ in particular making me feel jut that little bit uncomfortable. It's hard to damn someone too much over anachronistic values that are impossible for someone of a hundred years ago to adhere to, so I always took this with a pinch of salt.
Really, ‘The Oblivion Seekers’ is one of those books that it’s impossible for me to really write a particularly coherent and objective review of, because all I really want to do is gush. I just thought it was wonderful, truly. Eberhardt’s prose is among my favourite that I’ve read in the longest time and it’s this that made so much of ‘The Oblivion Seekers’ so unforgettable for me. Though travel writing (which is what most of Eberhardt’s work is classed as) isn’t always my favourite, I’m pretty sure from here I won’t be able to stop myself reading everything Eberhardt wrote that’s available. See you all on the other side!
July 29, 2021
3 3/4 stars
January 24, 2019
Suç, özellikle yoksul ve ezilen kitleler arasında, sıklıkla son bir özgürlük yeltenişidir.
Isabelle Eberhardt’ın çok garip bir yaşam öyküsü var. Zaten beni de yazdığı kitaptan çok hayat hikayesi cezbetti ve o sebeple merak edip Unutuşu Arayanları okudum.
Yaşamın sıra dışı oluşuna ağlaması onun bayağılığının, cahilliğinin bir işareti değil miydi?
Unutuşu Arayanlar, yazarın tek öykü kitabı. İçerisinde on bir öykü ve yazmış olduğu bir mektup var. Kitabın içerisindeki bütün öyküler en temelinde özgürlük ve başkaldırı temalarını ele alıyor. Yazdığı öyküleri bu kavramlar üzerinden işlemiş yazar.
Bir ev, bir aile, bir mülk veya kamusal bir görev sahibi olmak, belirli bir geçim yoluna sahip olmak ve sosyal makine içinde yararlı bir çark olmak... Bütün bunlar insanların büyük çoğunluğuna, entelektüeller ve hatta kendilerini bütünüyle özgürleştirmiş addedenlere bile, gereklilik hatta zaruret olarak görünür. Ancak, bu tür şeyler ötekilerle temastan, özellikle düzenli ve sürekli bir temastan doğan farklı bir tür kölelik biçimidir sadece.
İçerisinde güzel öyküler vardı. Özellikle Kara Kalem Yazıları, Taalith ve Mavi Üniforma aralarında en iyileriydi. Ancak diğer öyküler pek bana hitap etmedi. Düşünce tarzı olarak kendime çok uzak bulduğum öyküler de mevcuttu. Kitabın dilinin de biraz zor olduğunu belirtmek isterim. Kitabın sonunda kendi hayat hikayesi hakkında yazmış olduğu mektup da ayrıca ilginçti. Başkaldırış ve hayattaki arayış tarzı çok farklı. Ancak Isabelle Eberhardt benim için, yaşantısını çok ilginç bulduğum ama öyküleriyle çok uzlaşamadığım bir yazar oldu.
Birkaç entelektüelin üzerinde düşünce üretikleri bir konu vardır: Avare olma hakkı, dolaşma özgürlüğü. Ancak avarelik kurtuluştur ve yol yaşamı özgürlüğün özdür. Modern yaşamın bizi bağladığı zincirleri (bize daha fazla özgürlük sunduğu bahanesiyle) kırma cesaretine sahip olmak, sonra da o sembolik değnek ve heybeyi alıp, çıkmak!
Yalnız özgürlüğün (yalnız olmadığı sürece kimse özgür değildir çünkü) değerini ve latif tadını alan kişi için, ayrılık en cesur ve en güzel eylemdir.
Isabelle Eberhardt’ın çok garip bir yaşam öyküsü var. Zaten beni de yazdığı kitaptan çok hayat hikayesi cezbetti ve o sebeple merak edip Unutuşu Arayanları okudum.
Yaşamın sıra dışı oluşuna ağlaması onun bayağılığının, cahilliğinin bir işareti değil miydi?
Unutuşu Arayanlar, yazarın tek öykü kitabı. İçerisinde on bir öykü ve yazmış olduğu bir mektup var. Kitabın içerisindeki bütün öyküler en temelinde özgürlük ve başkaldırı temalarını ele alıyor. Yazdığı öyküleri bu kavramlar üzerinden işlemiş yazar.
Bir ev, bir aile, bir mülk veya kamusal bir görev sahibi olmak, belirli bir geçim yoluna sahip olmak ve sosyal makine içinde yararlı bir çark olmak... Bütün bunlar insanların büyük çoğunluğuna, entelektüeller ve hatta kendilerini bütünüyle özgürleştirmiş addedenlere bile, gereklilik hatta zaruret olarak görünür. Ancak, bu tür şeyler ötekilerle temastan, özellikle düzenli ve sürekli bir temastan doğan farklı bir tür kölelik biçimidir sadece.
İçerisinde güzel öyküler vardı. Özellikle Kara Kalem Yazıları, Taalith ve Mavi Üniforma aralarında en iyileriydi. Ancak diğer öyküler pek bana hitap etmedi. Düşünce tarzı olarak kendime çok uzak bulduğum öyküler de mevcuttu. Kitabın dilinin de biraz zor olduğunu belirtmek isterim. Kitabın sonunda kendi hayat hikayesi hakkında yazmış olduğu mektup da ayrıca ilginçti. Başkaldırış ve hayattaki arayış tarzı çok farklı. Ancak Isabelle Eberhardt benim için, yaşantısını çok ilginç bulduğum ama öyküleriyle çok uzlaşamadığım bir yazar oldu.
Birkaç entelektüelin üzerinde düşünce üretikleri bir konu vardır: Avare olma hakkı, dolaşma özgürlüğü. Ancak avarelik kurtuluştur ve yol yaşamı özgürlüğün özdür. Modern yaşamın bizi bağladığı zincirleri (bize daha fazla özgürlük sunduğu bahanesiyle) kırma cesaretine sahip olmak, sonra da o sembolik değnek ve heybeyi alıp, çıkmak!
Yalnız özgürlüğün (yalnız olmadığı sürece kimse özgür değildir çünkü) değerini ve latif tadını alan kişi için, ayrılık en cesur ve en güzel eylemdir.
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February 8, 2019“Above the gorges, scarcely moving their wings, hung the eagles, like golden nails affixed to the incandescent sky.”
This is a strange little collection: short stories, letters, and sketches that come together to feel something like a memoir. I’ve had it on my shelves for many years, but finally decided to read it because of a reference to Isabelle Eberhardt in Patti Smith’s Woolgatherers. A part of me is glad I waited this long, because it turned out to be a really interesting experience in light of our current sociopolitical climate.
Eberhardt writes about how borders, nationalism, and especially imperialism oppose individual freedom, and she celebrates the figure of the ‘vagrant’ in a way that is difficult for a modern reader to grapple with. At the same time, the images she draws of the impoverished, those who are cast off from mainstream society, are perhaps more relevant now than ever before. Her protagonists, the homeless and the disenfranchised, resist misrepresentation as outsiders and instead offer up their own experiences. Beyond that, the genuine curiosity, openness, and empathy with which Eberhardt approached encounters with people of other cultures and faiths than her own is directly reflected in these stories.
There is no doubt that Eberhardt was a truly remarkable woman, but her writing really stands on its own regardless of her biography. I loved the way she evokes landscape, and how the structure of the stories seems to recall religious fables. There is also something sinuous and disorienting about the way time shifts in her narratives which I found very unique and appealing.
Overall, a really interesting collection that asks what it means to recognize and move beyond a distorted or false sense of freedom.
This is a strange little collection: short stories, letters, and sketches that come together to feel something like a memoir. I’ve had it on my shelves for many years, but finally decided to read it because of a reference to Isabelle Eberhardt in Patti Smith’s Woolgatherers. A part of me is glad I waited this long, because it turned out to be a really interesting experience in light of our current sociopolitical climate.
Eberhardt writes about how borders, nationalism, and especially imperialism oppose individual freedom, and she celebrates the figure of the ‘vagrant’ in a way that is difficult for a modern reader to grapple with. At the same time, the images she draws of the impoverished, those who are cast off from mainstream society, are perhaps more relevant now than ever before. Her protagonists, the homeless and the disenfranchised, resist misrepresentation as outsiders and instead offer up their own experiences. Beyond that, the genuine curiosity, openness, and empathy with which Eberhardt approached encounters with people of other cultures and faiths than her own is directly reflected in these stories.
There is no doubt that Eberhardt was a truly remarkable woman, but her writing really stands on its own regardless of her biography. I loved the way she evokes landscape, and how the structure of the stories seems to recall religious fables. There is also something sinuous and disorienting about the way time shifts in her narratives which I found very unique and appealing.
Overall, a really interesting collection that asks what it means to recognize and move beyond a distorted or false sense of freedom.
July 19, 2014
Short selection of fiction and non-fiction by the intriguing figure of Eberhardt (1877-1904), daughter of a Russian anarchist who lived in Switzerland, who travelled to Algeria and converted to sufism. The focus of the writing is on life at the borders, in the interior regions of the fringes of French rule, and in the borders of respectable society, where vagrants and prostitutes wander. There is some anti-imperialist detail about the iniquities of French imperialism, under which the expropriated tribes were "compensated" according to alien notions of land inheritance, which were simply meaningless in the native culture. The importance of drugs to the visionary experience of the eponymous "oblivion seekers" is also considered. The selection was composed and translated by Paul Bowles, but the tone and content here is quite different from his novels, in which the pitiless desert and its ruins simply unwind the European minds; Eberhardt and her characters clearly believe they have discovered an alternative existence in Islam.
January 27, 2014
Amazing. Tranced into oneness with the universe. Poetic. Impressionistic. Other worldly. Paul Bowles has offered a superb translation of these evocative stories, stories that take the reader to a different time with nomads and kif smokers and French colonialists in Morocco and Algeria. (Reading this collection was like hearing Jimmy Hendrix for the first time--a real rush.)
April 27, 2020
The objective beauty and strangeness of this work is outmatched only by its importance to me as a single small person who feels fully understood by its author, who was born 114 years too early for me to meet her and died when she was one year younger than I am now. “The Rival” and especially “Pencilled Notes” spoke to me, which feels inadequate to say. What a gift.
January 26, 2016
Incandescent writing.
November 25, 2017
This was a collection of beautiful, gem-like short stories set in North Africa in the early 1900s. Even in translation, I was struck by the beauty of the language here.
May 20, 2018
ne hoş bir kadın...
August 26, 2017
A curious collection of tales by a most fascinating, unconventional woman who captured a view of North Africa at the turn of the twentieth century from a perspective that most European women would never have dared to take. For my full review, see: https://roughghosts.com/2017/08/25/to...
August 4, 2017
Yazarın hayatı ilgimi çektiği için başladım. Hikayeler hafif ve kolay okunuyor. Kitap incecik zaten. Ama Eberhardt'ın yazar olarak pek başarılı olduğunu söyleyemeyeceğim. Öykülerin bazılarında gerçekten sıkıldım.
June 24, 2023
Outside - 4/5 stars
Blue Jacket - 5/5 stars (fave)
Achoura - 5/5 stars (fave)
The Convert - 4/5 stars
Criminal- 3/5 stars
Taalith - 4.5/5 stars
The Rival - 3/5 stars
The Magician - 4/5 stars
Pencilled Notes - 4/5 stars
The Oblivion Seekers - 3/5 stars
The Breath of Night - 3/5 stars
Blue Jacket - 5/5 stars (fave)
Achoura - 5/5 stars (fave)
The Convert - 4/5 stars
Criminal- 3/5 stars
Taalith - 4.5/5 stars
The Rival - 3/5 stars
The Magician - 4/5 stars
Pencilled Notes - 4/5 stars
The Oblivion Seekers - 3/5 stars
The Breath of Night - 3/5 stars
October 13, 2007
Raised by a Russian Nihilist in Switzerland, Eberhardt escaped to French Algeria in 1897 at age twenty and converted to Islam there with her mother. She traveled as a man but fell in love with and married a man too, joined a Sufi brotherhood, was gored by a would-be assassin's saber, both worked with and fought violently against the French colonizing powers, and died in a flash flood which also carried away her life's writings. The Oblivion Seekers is a translation by Paul Bowles of the fragments that could be found in the wreckage of the flood. Eberhardt's biography is a such a catalogue of courage and transgression of lines of geography, culture, religion and sex that it's hard not to swoon. Her best stories are the ones that play off this experience of conversion, show the slow tidal shift from one world to another in the minds of her characters. At the same time, as a European, she became friends with militaryman Hubert Lyautey who as much as anyone helped bring the Sahara under French colonial domination, suggesting the limits of a conversion from Europe that, when convenient, allowed one to convert back. Although I loved her stories, it's strange when the closest we can come to a literature of the colonized is written by a woman from the continent of the colonizer in ethnic drag. I was plagued by the thought: Is she just reading me back the stories of the Other that I want to hear?
February 9, 2025
A small delicious sampling of the incipient genius of Isabelle Eberhardt, just enough to whet our taste for her sumptuous prose and her portrayal of the vagabond life.
The chief facet that distinguishes her stories from the rest is her utter reliance on the landscape to tell the story. In most of her short stories, there is a vivid, poetic description of the mise en scene which introduces us to the main character, told in a way that makes that character just another part of the environment. Her beautiful painterly style turns the protagonists into transient aspects of the landscape, seemingly here forever but suddenly gone in a breath of desert wind. Fascinated and hypnotic.
The chief facet that distinguishes her stories from the rest is her utter reliance on the landscape to tell the story. In most of her short stories, there is a vivid, poetic description of the mise en scene which introduces us to the main character, told in a way that makes that character just another part of the environment. Her beautiful painterly style turns the protagonists into transient aspects of the landscape, seemingly here forever but suddenly gone in a breath of desert wind. Fascinated and hypnotic.
August 11, 2012
This tiny tome is a teaser, a tasting menu of tidbits by and about the remarkable Isabelle Eberhardt. She was the original rebel girl, adopting the dress of an Algerian man in the late 19th century, wandering freely about the desert on horseback, and causing Algerian officials all kinds of headaches.
You'll find a brief summary of Isabelle's life - one that will make you want to read more about her. You'll find a modest collection of her stories, vignettes really, that are full of obvious autobiographical references and firsthand observations, as well as odd premonitions of her own untimely death. These will make you want to read more of her stories and learn more about the context of her writings. You'll also find a ridiculously brief excerpt from her diary - which will make you want to read the full diary. And a smattering of letters and personal notes.
On the one hand, the book was frustratingly lightweight, leaving me hankering for more. On the other hand, it is a quick overview a fascinating personality that serves as a nice entrée into future reading.
You'll find a brief summary of Isabelle's life - one that will make you want to read more about her. You'll find a modest collection of her stories, vignettes really, that are full of obvious autobiographical references and firsthand observations, as well as odd premonitions of her own untimely death. These will make you want to read more of her stories and learn more about the context of her writings. You'll also find a ridiculously brief excerpt from her diary - which will make you want to read the full diary. And a smattering of letters and personal notes.
On the one hand, the book was frustratingly lightweight, leaving me hankering for more. On the other hand, it is a quick overview a fascinating personality that serves as a nice entrée into future reading.
February 18, 2017
Languid short stories that will slow your reading, in order to appreciate the rich narrative of love, loss, pain, and ecstasy...
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