Born in 1877 in Geneva, Switzerland, Isabelle Eberhardt became a rebel at an early age. Multilingual (French, German, and Russian), she began studying Arabic language and Islamic culture and eventually converted to Islam and joined a Qadiriyya Sufi brotherhood. Writings from the Sand is the document of a remarkable life and a literary treasure.
Isabelle Eberhardt (1877¿1904) died at the age of twenty-seven in a flash flood in the desert town of A¿Sefra, Algeria.
Melissa Marcus is professor emerita of French at Northern Arizona University. She is the translator of Fawzia Assaad¿s Layla, An Egyptian Woman and Malika Mokeddem¿s The Forbidden Woman (Nebraska, 1998).
