Rating: 
Summary: One of the most biased, unsympathetic biographies written!
Review: Freya Stark led an amazing life and deserves honorable recognition for her illuminating work, not a deprecating biography by an author who never knew her. This book is full of social messages and tries to incorporate a liberal agenda into the life of an extraordinary woman. Too much attention is paid to meaningless nuances. For example, the author repeatedly implies that Freya Stark was an ugly woman. This is simply not true. Sure, she may not have been stunning but it is clear that she was average and by no means homely. The author seems to have no respect for this great woman and it makes this book difficult to appreciate.
Rating: 
Summary: The Consumate Adventurer
Review: Freya Stark was quite a lady and adventurer. Her life is a fascinating story of hardships and triumphs. I enjoyed this book immensely the first time around and plan to read it again (and maybe again)
Rating:
Summary: Keen Observer
Review: Freya Stark's biography is well-done. As a librarian I have noticed that Stark's books had begun to be discarded for lack of readership. Now the new bio creates an interest and readers can't always find her works. I have carried aold (I made it in 1968) copy of an essay she wrote called "On Silence", about her experience with her Bedouin hosts and their lovely manner of not needing to fill the air with small talk. I did not record the title of the book I copied the essay from. Do any of her fans know in which book the essay appeared?
Rating:
Summary: Superb life of a true romantic!
Review: Having read Molly Izzard's biography of Freya Stark,which was without doubt the worst book I've ever read,I was delighted to read this incredible book about an incredible person.The author is to be congratulated for bringing Freya to life.My imagination is fired and I want to be off to a long gone world!
Rating: 
Summary: 'Minaret of Djam'
Review: I only wish that the author had devoted more to Freya Stark's, MINARET OF DJAM: AN EXCURSION IN AFGHANISTAN. It merits one page in the index. During my Peace Corps service in Iran, 1970-72; I had the opportunity, in 3/71 and 4/72, to travel overland across the Iran/Afghan border via Islam Qala to Herat, the medieval Timurid capital. When Andre Maricq became the first European to visit the Minaret of Djam in 1957, he immediately aroused the interest of islamic archaelogists. From Herat I could have reached the Minaret of Djam, located in Ghor Province (Velayet_ Ghor) in two days of difficlut overland travel. Alas, I did not. Christopher Sykes was within proximity to this minaret in the early 1930s, but did not see it. Your readers may also find this URL of interest http://www.isjm.org/country/herat.htm
Rating:
Summary: PASSIONATE BIOGRAPHY
Review: I read about PASSIONATE NOMADE in a book catalog and thought it might be interesting to read, so I checked it out of the library. Fify pages into it, I returned it to the library and bought my own copy.Freya Stark was a very intelligent and very gusty lady, one I would have loved to have known. Although her exciting travels in the Middle East brought her fame and recognition, her personal life was fully of pain and insecurity. Jane Geniesse has written an incredible biography of an incredible woman. An unexpected bonus of this book is the understanding it has given me of the 20th century history and culture of the Middle East. With my son currently stationed in Iraq, the insights this book has given me are especially revelant.
Rating:
Summary: surprise information
Review: i want the author to contact me; i have additional information about freya stark's birth
Rating: 
Summary: Passionate Nomad: The Life of Freya Stark.
Review: In a captivating book about one of the great English-language interpreters of the Middle East, Geniesse (a novelist and former New York Times reporter) draws on the huge and expressive bulk of Freya Stark's letters to paint a personal and professional portrait of rare accomplishment. Stark (1893-1993) lived a tumultuous, semi-privileged, and constricting early life, which she broke out of by learning Arabic and then in 1927 sailing off to Lebanon. She quickly found her double vocation, as intrepid explorer and eloquent letter-writer, then pursued and built on these skills through two glorious decades, achieving best-sellerdom, fame, and the company of the high and mighty. During the war years she even acquired a modicum of political influence. (That said, Stark's one sustained political effort, a British government-sponsored speaking tour to the United States in 1943-44, was a disaster, with her anti-Zionist message finding much attention but very little sympathy and she, late of Persia and the Hadramaut, finding little in turn to charm her in America's modernity.) But if her public life was a roaring success, the private life was notably less so. Two amusing chapters concern the "three foolish virgins" (about an episode in 1937-38, when Stark and two female scholars went off to Yemen) and her only marriage (at age 54) to a man who very soon after the wedding revealed his homosexuality (or rather, she could no longer pretend not to see it). In general, with the advancement of Stark's career, her biography becomes more interesting. But early or late, the evocation of a world only sixty years back but so removed from ours in its rhythms and its concerns - with the intense letter writing, the extended visits to country houses, and the imperatives of empire - will keep the attention of every reader. Middle East Quarterly, December 1999
Rating:
Summary: Captivating life story of an early 20th c. woman explorer
Review: In this lively and rigorously researched account of Freya Stark's captivating life, Jane Fletcher Geniesse also introduces an exotic, romantic Middle East of honorable traditions to readers who may associate that region more with OPEC, terrorism, and Saddam Hussein. All in all, a compelling book about a complex woman and the fascinating people and cultures she explored.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating portrait of a courageous english explorer
Review: Jane Geniesse has captured Freya Stark, an English original, with flair and insight. Her biography is a colorful and thoughtful portrait of an intelligent, determined and sometimes infuriating woman who, under the most difficult circumstances, chose to explore -often alone- remote and mysterious areas of the Arab world largely unknown to the West. It is the fascinating story of a lonely lady driven to leave behind very real personal problems by traveling through some of the most dangerous parts of the world and returning to write several award- winning accounts of her adventures. A wonderful book!
|
