Jane Fletcher Geniesse PASSIONATE NOMAD Signed Hardback
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Jane Fletcher Geniesse PASSIONATE NOMAD Signed Hardback
First USA edition, second print hardback of PASSIONATE NOMAD: The Life of Freya Stark by Jane Fletcher Geniesse and published by Random House Inc., New York in 1999. Signed and inscribed by Jane Fletcher Geniesse on the title page. Stated 'First Edition' on the copyright page.The book is in very good condition (Clean quarter bound red cloth over red partly embossed boards with gilt lettering on spine), with minor shelf wear to the illustrated dust jacket which is not price clipped. Internally, the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no other inscriptions.
Jane Fletcher Geniesse, a former reporter for the New York Times, researched American Priestess for seven years. Her writing has been featured in The Washington Post, New York magazine, and Town & Country, among others. She is the author of a novel, The Riches of Life. Following Freya Stark's footsteps, she has travelled to Yemen, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Morocco, India and China. Her biography of Freya Stark, Passionate Nomad, was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award. She lives in Florida and Washington, D.C.
"With the publication of The Valleys of the Assassins in 1934, a legend was launched. Freya Stark had begun the extraordinary adventures that would earn her glamorous reputation as the last of the romantic travelers. Hailed as a classic, the book chronicled her travels in remote and dangerous regions of the Middle East, inspiring Lawrence of Arabia to call audacious and ambitious Freya, a gallant creature.
She had already gained a minor reputation in 1927, when she was captured by French military police after penetrating their cordon around the rebellious Druze
Throughout her long lifeshe died in 1993, over a hundred years old, having been knighted at the age of eighty-two by the QueenDame Freya rejoiced in the attentions of the press and of her audiences. In private she remarked that she put herself in harm's way in order not to fear death.
Her indomitable spirit was forged by contradictions. A child of privilege, she grew up in poverty after her mother rashly left her father to live with an Italian count and engage in a hair-brained, idealistic manufacturing scheme. Freya yearned for a formal education but was largely self-taught, mastering seven languages. She longed for love but consistently focused on the wrong men.
She was thirty- four before she extricated herself from her family and embarked on the travels that would bring her fame. Her astonishing career lasted over sixty years, during which she produced twenty-two books unmatched for perception and poetic prose.
This is a brilliant, balanced biography, rich in sheikhs, diplomats, nomad warriors and chieftains, generals, would-be lovers, and luminaries, with the author Jane Fletcher Geniesse digging beneath the mythology to uncover a complex, quixotic, and controversial woman.
'[Geniesse] has achievedan admirable focus, at once critical and sympathetic. The portrait that emerges is a subtle and generous one. For all Stark's unresolved contradictions... her distinction as a latter-day woman of letters survives.' Colin Thubron, New York Times Book Review
'Geniesse tells Stark's story straightforwardly and without fuss, allowing her eventful life, rather than a lot of commentary on it, to produce a lively and flavorful narrativeThe woman who emerges from these pages is a complex figure--heroic, driven, lonely, and entirely human.' The New York Times
'Geniesse has made an inexhaustibly spirited and entertaining story of [Stark's life]A just and generous portrait of a truly remearkable woman.' The Observer (London)
'Jane Fletcher Geniesse's biography of Dame Stark is a fitting tribute. She communicates the charm with which Stark ingratiated herself into dangerous situations and then eased herself out of them. Geniesse is careful to balance the aspects of Stark's life that make her so remarkable.' Sunday Independent (London)
302 pages with bibliography, notes, and index. Illustrated with black & white photographs and maps.
ISBN: 0 394 58396 5
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Jane Fletcher Geniesse PASSIONATE NOMAD Signed Hardback