Book cover of Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark

Book description

A New York Times Notable Book • Finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction

“Highly readable biography . . . The woman who emerges from these pages is a complex figure—heroic, driven . . . and entirely human.”—Richard Bernstein, The New York Times

Passionate Nomad captures the momentous…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Passionate Nomad as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Among a tiny handful of intrepid women travellers in the nineteenth and twentieth century, Freya Sterk stands out. Not only for her courage in going where no woman or man had gone before in remote and dangerous Middle Eastern regions and for her unique mastery of their languages, but also for her own beautiful writing. Largely self-educated, she is adopted by the Royal Geographical Society and lionised as an explorer. And she revels in the limelight. Knighted by the Queen at age 82, Freya emerges as appealingly human and fallible, and unusually democratic in her dealings with the people she…

From Caroline's list on about and by madly inspiring women.

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