Freya Stark--traveler, explorer, Arabist, and woman of letters--began the extraordinary adventures that would glamorize her--and would catapult her into public life for the next sixty years--in 1927. And with the publication of The Valley of the Assassins in 1934, her legend was launched.
Leaving behind a miserable family life, Freya set out, at the age of thirty-four, to explore remote and dangerous regions of the Middle East. She was captured in 1927 by the French military police after penetrating their cordon around the rebellious Druze. She explored the mountainous territory of the...