Book Nook: Passionate Nomad - The Life of Freya Stark

Passionate Nomad - The Life of Freya Stark; By Jane Fletcher Geniesse; Random House, 1999; 394 pp; US$27.95

JAKARTA (JP): Her name is not well-known today, but Stark gained fame in the 1930s for her pioneering travels through the Middle East. She grew up in Italy in an unorthodox domestic arrangement after her German mother left her English father to live with an Italian count (to make matters even more dysfunctional, the latter eventually married Stark's younger sister).

After a failed love affair, she began traveling at the age of 34 in 1927, making her first stop in Damascus. She would eventually crisscross lands where few foreign men, and precious few women, had dared to tread, gaining an immense knowledge of the Arab region. She was also a gifted writer; excerpts from her letters and books attest to a sublimely evocative writing style able to convey the sights and sounds of a distant land.

Fletcher Geniesse, although not a scintillating writer, adequately conveys the life and times of the extraordinary Stark. What emerges is the portrait of a woman who braved the unknown to escape an at times achingly personal life (she nearly died in a horrific childhood accident, her mother was a nightmarish figure and Stark in later life married an English army officer, only to discover he was a closeted homosexual). This biography whets the appetite to discover more about Stark through reading about her travels in her own beautiful words. (brc)