Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Tangled Web, A: Mata Hari: Dancer, Courtesan, Spy
Author: CRAIG MARY W
Format: HARDCOVER
Publication date: 01/09/2017
Imprint: HISTORY PRESS LTD
Price: $50.00
Publishing status: Active
In this new biography, published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of her execution, Mata
Hari is revealed in all of her flawed eccentricity; a woman whose adult life was a fantastical web
of lies and half-truths. Following a bitter divorce and the death of a young son, Hari reinvented
herself as an exotic dancer in Paris, before finally taking up the life of a courtesan. She could
have remained a half-forgotten member of France’s grande horizontale were it not for the First
World War and her disastrous decision to become embroiled in espionage.
What happened next was part farce and part tragedy that ended in her execution in October
1917. Recruited by both the Germans and the French as a spy, Hari codenamed H 21 was
also almost recruited by the Russians. But the harmless fantasies and lies she had told on stage
had become part of the deadly game of agents and foreign agents during wartime. Struggling
with the huge cost of war, the French authorities needed to catch a spy. Mata Hari, the dancer,
the courtesan, the fantasist, became the prize catch.
ISBN: 9780750968195