Northshire Saratoga: Hédi Jaouad - The Immortal Journeys of Isabelle Eberhardt

This is an in person event at our Saratoga Springs, NY store!

Jaouad will discuss his powerful new biography, in which the legendary fin-de-siècle adventuress Isabelle Eberhardt emerges as a radically modern figure who lived on her own terms—crossing boundaries of gender, faith, empire, and identity.

In The Immortal Journeys of Isabelle Eberhardt, acclaimed scholar Hédi A. Jaouad offers a bold reexamination of the Swiss-born writer and adventurer whose short life (1877–1904) has long been romanticized, misread, or exoticized. Unlike previous biographies, this book centers the profound relationship between Eberhardt's writing and the geographies she crossed—revealing how her identity, art, and inner life were shaped not by chronology, but by place.

Divided into two parts—"Isabelle Bound" and "Isabelle Unbound"—the book traces Eberhardt's evolution from a precocious outcast in Geneva to a shape-shifting wanderer in colonial North Africa who lived disguised as an Arab man, converted to Islam, joined a Sufi brotherhood, and fiercely challenged the moral and political boundaries of her time.

Jaouad explores how Eberhardt's spatial existence—dizzyingly mobile, vividly immersive—fueled a kind of life writing that is inseparable from place writing. Her diaries and sketches reveal a philosophy of motion as meaning: to cross into new terrain was, for her, to cross into new dimensions of self.

For readers captivated by outsider lives, feminist iconoclasts, and the search for personal sovereignty, The Immortal Journeys of Isabelle Eberhardt presents Eberhardt not as a symbol or mirage, but as a fiercely real figure—forever on the move.

"Inspiring, exquisitely researched, and deftly written. I loved it." --Elizabeth Gilbert, author, Eat, Pray, Love

HÉDI A. JAOUAD, a native of Tunisia, is a leading scholar of North African literature. He is a Professor Emeritus of French and Francophone Studies at Skidmore College and the founder and editor of Revue CELAAN, a journal dedicated to enhancing our understanding of literature and the arts in North Africa.

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