One does not know what more to admire about Alexandra David-Néel: her boundless energy, her infinite thirst for knowledge, her willpower or her literary talent. Her books about Asian cultures have become real classics. At the turn of the century, at a time when sheltered bourgeois daughters were learning to cook and embroider in boarding schools, the twenty-three-year-old Frenchwoman set off to get to know Asia. In India she studied the different religious traditions and spoke with many outstanding personalities such as Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo, Gandhi and Nehru. She paints a realistic and profound picture of this often enigmatic conglomeration of traditional superstition and genuine mystical religiosity. Her portrayal makes it clear what a fascination India has always been able to exert on us Europeans.