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Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari
William Morrow
August 2007
On Sale: July 31, 2007
ISBN: 0060817283
EAN: 9780060817282
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
In 1917, the notorious Oriental dancer Mata Hari was
arrested on the charge of espionage; less than one year
later she was tried and executed—charged with the deaths of
at least 50,000 gallant French soldiers. The mistress of
many senior Allied officers and government officials, even
the French minister of war, she had a sharp intellect and a
golden tongue fluent in several languages; she also traveled
widely throughout wartorn Europe, with seeming disregard for
the political and strategic alliances and borders. But was
she actually a spy? In this persuasive new biography, Pat
Shipman explores the life and times of the mythic and deeply
misunderstood dark-eyed siren to find the truth. Her blissful Dutch childhood as Margaretha Zelle ended
abruptly with her parents' emotionally scarring divorce and,
shortly after, her mother's death. Shuttled off to reluctant
relations, Margaretha impulsively married a much older man,
who gave her syphilis (then incurable) and took her to the
Dutch East Indies, where the unhappy marriage exploded into
vicious hatred following the death of their oldest child.
Fleeing her tragic marriage, she reinvented herself as Mata
Hari, a scandalously sensual dancer with an Indies name and
an Indies aura about her novel "artistic" dances. Mata Hari's life reads like both an action-packed adventure
tale and passionate, poignant romance. Shipman reveals new
information about this beautiful, brilliant, and dangerous
woman, tracing the web of connections between her
professional and personal lives. Once called "an orchid in a
field of dandelions," Mata Hari was one of a kind, a rich
and multifaceted personality whose ambitions and talents
propelled her breathtaking rise—and her tragic fall.
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