Isabelle Eberhardt, Dependent on Chance

February 11, 2019

“A subject to which intellectuals never give a thought,” wrote Isabelle Eberhardt in a notebook, “is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander. Yet vagrancy is deliverance, and life on the open road is the essence of freedom.” The Paris Review‘s excellent column, “Feminize Your Canon,” returns with Eberhardt, a cross-dressing Swiss explorer and author who published under a male pseudonym as a teenager. Learn about her uncompromising life filled with intrigue, adventure, and passion.

is a writer and illustrator. She is the author of two illustrated books, Last Night's Reading (Penguin Books, 2015) and Sanpaku (Archaia 2018).