Scenes de la Vie Orientale: Les Femmes Du LibanPaperback, 7 December 2016

Nerval left for the Orient in 1842. He stayed in Cairo where he cohabited with a slave he had bought and, searching for a soul sister, went on to Beirut and the mountains. The impressions and observations provoked by these settings led him to think about alterity in terms above and beyond the exotic.