Out of Africa
by Isak Dinesen
Published: 1937
Genres: Memoir, Non-fiction
Format: Hardcover (399 pages)
Source: Library
Out of Africa is Isak Dinesen's memoir of her years in Africa, from 1914 to 1931, on a four-thousand-acre coffee plantation in the hills near Nairobi. She had come to Kenya from Denmark with her husband, and when they separated she stayed on to manage the farm by herself, visited frequently by her lover, the big-game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, for whom she would make up stories "like Scheherazade." In Africa, "I learned how to tell tales," she recalled many years later.
This reads more like a collection of short stories of things she remembers from having a coffee farm in Africa. They are true stories which makes it more interesting to me. It can get a little dry since there is no overall plot, but it’s still a fascinating look at a different life and times. Isak Dinesen was a pen name for Karen Blixen and she was an inspiring and independent woman. The book is pretty similar to the movie. I really liked it.
Content Rating: None
About Isak Dinesen
Karen Christence Dinesen, Baroness Blixen-Finecke - wrote as Isak Dinesen, Pierre Andrézel, other pseudonyms: Tania Blixen, Osceola, etc.
A Danish writer, who mixed in her work supernatural elements, aestheticism, and erotic undertones with an aristocratic view of life, Blixen always emphasized that she was a storyteller in the traditional, oral sense of the word. She drew her inspiration from the Bible, the Arabian Nights, the works of Homer, the Icelandic Sagas, and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, who was her great fellow countryman. She wrote in English and in Danish.
Baroness Karen Blixen was born in Rungsted, Denmark, into a well-to-do patrician family. She was the daughter of Ingeborg Westenholz Dinesen, and the writer and army officer Wilhelm Dinesen, whose adventuresome spirit and storytelling talents influenced deeply Blixen's imagination. She spent her childhood on the family estate in Rungsted. Throughout her life Blixen's outlook and manner were unabashedly aristocratic.
My name is Jessica. I love to read Young Adult and classic literature. I’ve been a book blogger for six years and I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. I’m a very curious reader. Writing about all the questions and thoughts I had while reading a book is the best hobby ever.
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