The True Story About Me: Isabelle Eberhardt, the Legend of the Kahina and the Construction of Identity

Isabelle Eberhardt’s larger than life biography has exerted an extraordinary hold on the occidental feminist imagination and yet her writing, from fiction to journalism, remains in her shadow. In this article Eberhardt’s identity politics are contextualised around the historiography of the Kahina legend in Algeria; and examined in relation to the textual construction of her Islamic identity; further complicated by a negotiation of the strategic political manoeuvres that Eberhardt undertakes to further her literary career. It is part of my wider research and construction of Eberhardt for the twenty- first century: moving away from the gender ambiguities to focus on her literary and Islamic identity.