Publisher's Synopsis
Emily Ruete, generally credited as the first female Arab author of a biography, was born in 1844 as Salme bint Said into the Royal family in Zanzibar. Her love-affair with the German merchant Heinrich Ruete and her elopement in 1866 made her an outcast on the island. Brought up as a Muslima she had to take the difficult decision to convert to Christianity before leaving everything behind what was dear to her and migrate from Africa to Europe. In Germany, her new homeland she was at first gazed at as an exotic outsider. Here, the upper-class society in Hamburg watched carefully the transition from a uncivilised Arab Princess to a respectable German lady. Tragically her Heinrich Ruete died in an accident in 1870 before Emily could get familiar with her new life. The young widow decided to stay on and bring her three small children up as German Christians. Soon thereafter, widowed with financial problems, she lost her position in the Hamburg society In her hybrid identity Emily Ruete observed the different societies she lived in accurately and commented on it. Her first work "Memoiren einer arabischen Princessin" published in 1886 in German was soon translated in English and enthusiastically received. Her description, the first by an insider of a harem, focusing on her childhood in Zanziba,r played an important role in the Oriental discourse at the time. It has been reprinted, republished and translated again and again and is still very popular. Emily's transition from the Orient to Europe was not as smooth as her memoirs suggest. Therefore it seems necessary to add to a new translation quotations from her second book "Briefe an die Heimat", a kind of diary which seemingly was never posted to a friend in Zanzibar. In "Letters home" the author describes her burdensome life and the European/German society in detail, this time as an insider comparing it to her experiences back home. Emily Ruete aka Salme bint Said had a strong character and made the best of a life in a strange country. She tried hard to adjust but still yearned to settle for a place she could call home.
