Isabelle Eberhardt had a fascinating life - a young European woman, a convert to Islam, living and travelling around early 1900s Algeria, often dressed in male Arab costume, she was expelled by the French colonial authorities and almost killed by a member of a rival Muslim sect.

Frustratingly, very little of this comes out in the diaries - which are not so much diaries (ie a record of the events of someone's life) as journals (as in 'I have to do some journaling today'). Occasionally there is a snippet of something which actually happened, but the majority of the contents are either descriptions of the countryside, which read like first drafts of the literary career to which Eberhardt aspired, incoherent admonitions to herself to live better, or self-pitying complaints about how no-one really understands her ("needless to say ... mediocre people cannot abide me"). The general effect is very teenage - and strangely modern - I would never have guessed that the inner life of a late-Victorian woman would be so recognisable. Sadly that's the most interesting thing about the book. ( )