Marion Dapsance’s new biography of Alexandra David-Neel delves into her subject’s prolific writings to discover the true origins of her philosophy, casting new light on the myth that has grown up around the French exploratrice extraordinaire for almost a century.

Though little known outside Western Europe, Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1969) is celebrated in her native France as a major spiritual figure of the 20th century. She is remembered as a fearless adventurer, the first Westerner to enter Tibet’s forbidden city of Lhasa, the bringer of Buddhism to the West, an erudite chronicler and author of over 40 books.

But far from adopting Buddhism, she is revealed in this work as a staunch materialist, hostile to all forms of religion. We follow her journey from Catholic convert to Protestantism, to her obsession with late 19th-century esotericism and finally to nihilism and anarchism, before she invents her own belief system after decades in the Far East, which she calls Buddhist Modernism.

This book shows how her free-thinking independence is the true source of the myth of the intrepid journalist-orientalist, the lamp of wisdom, the woman with soles of wind.