Objectivement Karen Blixen est une mauvaise gestionnaire qui mene sa ferme a la perte. Elle est pedante et imbue de sa personne. Note speciale: elle ne parle de son mari qu une seule fois, a la page 320! ( )

Out of Africa (1937) is a book that has changed lives. The heady romanticism on the frontier of colonial Kenya is enough to make anyone want to pack up and head for Africa - and many have tried, in reality by going, and by deep immersion in biographical study of the Kenyan colonialists that form the fabric of this book. The 1980's movie just re-enforced the legend and further spurred the Blixen fan club. It's a beautiful book told with grace and insight that captures the dieing spirit of colonialism in the middle 20th century between the wars.

Sadly for me the book is marred by a certain moroseness, an emphasis on death and dieing. Every chapter and incident seems to be focused on someone or something - tribe, culture, way of life - that is dead or dieing. Her coldness comes through in the end when she (almost) shoots her pets and animals. And we learn she later in life committed suicide. All this cast a pale of darkness over the beautiful atmosphere she describes to render it a deeply sad and ultimately tragic story. Yet the power of it is real, and for that it is and will remain a classic. ( )

"I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills... It was Africa distilled up through six thousand feet, like the strong and refined essence of a continent... In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be."
- from Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa

Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa was not exactly what I expected. I went into reading it thinking that it was a traditional memoir, but it is actually a series of lyrical vignettes describing the life of Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen in Africa. Written sometime after she left Africa, the stories contained in Out of Africa reflect the distance Dinesen was able to put between herself and much of the hardship she suffered as a first-time coffee farmer in Kenya.

Among my favorite of her stories were the accounts of "Kamanate and Lulu." In the four stories included in this first part of Out of Africa, Dinesen describes her efforts to cure a young native boy who has a debilitating illness, and to adopt an orphaned bushbuck fawn, probably destined for someone's dinner table.

From the beginning, it is clear that Dinesen has a sense of humility where the native Africans were concerned, that is practically unheard of in other white colonists of her time. Her strong feelings for the native people and the harsh beauty of the land surrounding her farm is obvious to the reader. As she struggles to better understand the Kikuyu, Masai and Somali people, she comes to the realization that despite being dependent on them, she will never truly "know" them. This notwithstanding, she never stops admiring them, and learns a great deal from them in her time.

Isak Dinesen wrote beautifully of her love for Africa and it's people. Her stories are delicate and enthralling, and sweep you up in the words and imagery they contain. The language she uses is luminous, and her descriptions of the people and animals of East Africa are simply magical. Out of Africa is exquisitely written and will keep you turning pages late into the night. ( )

her writing made me feel as if I was in Africa. ( )

Read this for my book club. I have a vague memory of seeing the movie years ago, but don't remember much about it. I think it was the love story of Dinesen and Denys Finch-Hatton, so that was what I was expecting the book to be.

Dinesen ran a coffee farm in Africa, a few miles away fron Nairobi. The book is almost entirely about Dinesen's relationships with the Natives she lived with. It is a little frustrating to read, because she has something of the colonial attitude of superiority, but not enough for her to not see the Africans as individuals and appreciating them in many ways. It is, however, a picture of the dealings of people with very different cultures and habits of mind. And in many ways I agree that Western culture is better, but not in all ways, and certainly colonialism had its extremely dark side. Dineson mentions casually that the African's weren't allowed to own land!

Dinesen's descriptions of Africa are lyrical, and one feels how much of a tragedy it was in her life for the farm to fail and for her to be forced to leave Africa. She does talk about Finch-Hatton and his untimely death.

An impressive work i was glad to read. ( )

loved it, strong female

A beautiful adaption of life in Africa. Worth reading, and a memorable find. ( )

1st pub 1937, 1938 Random House. ( )

When I was in Africa ... I saw the film Out of Africa a couple of years ago, what a beautiful film, so was curious to see her life in Africa through her own eyes. This is her life in Kenya on a cotton plantation, her relationships with those living around her, servants, the blacksmith and the 'squatters'. A lot of examples of the differences between the white settlers and the Kikuyu and Masai, but also of the similarities of man.

She obviously loved the land, its people and nature, but the one thing missing is who Blixen really was. We get glimpses of her, reflected as if through a mirror, in her stories of others ( )

This is a marvellous book, but not for the fast-living, easy to be distracted consumption reader who is simply in it for superficial kicks or obvious references to the well-known movie (including a heroic love story). The beauty, for a large part, lies in the patient descriptions of Africa and depth of the reflections. Or, as the writer herself could have said it: being able to observe the raw realities of life, and understand its laws or conditions, one must not be naïve or arrogant, but know the full extent of it, and accept it even if it isn’t liked. And ‘knowing the full extend’, is here a tour de force that is both intimidating and hopeful.
What you get is an account of a long lost era, a world that is no more, having been swept away by the tides of time, capitalist modes of living and trends towards global uniformity. A whole era of ideas and lifestyles, both indigenous and western, that was already disappearing in the years that Karen Blixen lived on her African farm, is now completely gone, but somehow survives on the pages of this book. And while Blixen herself is conscious of this change, regrets the destruction, and is unable to resist moods of melancholy all the time, she doesn’t fall in the trap of easy sentimentality. On the contrary, she is a sharp observer and a true positivist, who combines the social eye of the anthropologist and the efficient, beautiful writing of the novelist.
For the modern reader who has become used to the simplistic, self-centred rhetoric of commentators, politicians, and experts, it is refreshing to read about colonialist procedures, the confrontation between cultures, religious strive, where in the analysis there is still room for subtlety, amazement, understanding, and acceptance of difference. For example, one is likely to learn more about the peculiar complexity of moslim gender roles in Africa by reading Karen Blixen’s portrayal of Somali women than one would from the prejudiced and angry stereotyping that comes with contemporary ‘pamphleteers’ such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
But what makes the book outstanding, beyond its many and accurate social commentaries, is the emotion that drives it. The story is inhabited by a song, a dance of characters –one of it is nature, the landscape – and each and every one of them finds a place in the heart of the reader. When at last Karen Blixen has to leave her farm and Africa, one has the feeling that the loss is not just hers, but of everyone – European and African – who for a time lived on that farm near the Ngong Hills.
Because the story ends badly, the end of the book is heartbreaking. But Karen Blixen is too good a writer to pass up the opportunity for creating one lasting image. When being forced to accept the depressing state of her affairs, with the implication of an inevitable departure back to Denmark, she is able to turn this unwanted destiny into something more deep and reassuring: “It was not I who was going away. I did not have it in my power to leave Africa, but it was the country that was slowly and gravely withdrawing from me, like the sea in ebb-tide.”

All this reader can think of is that without such a pitiful withdrawal, perhaps this beautiful book would never have seen the light. ( )

I have mixed feelings about this author's memoir of her time on a coffee farm in the Ngong hills, Kenya in the early 1900's. A non-chronologic telling of many tales from her time in Africa and finally about her bittersweet departure. Mostly beautifully wriiten, the prose is very evocative of the land, although at times trending toward mawkish and overly mystical.

It is written during the time of colonialism and Ms. Blixen is quite paternalistic toward 'the coloured races". While I have no doubt she loved and respected the Kenyan people - frankly, many of her comments were clearly racist by today's standards. I am also troubled by her attitude toward the animals. In one breath she lauds the majesty of the elephant, the giraffe, the lion. The next, seemingly without remorse, she shoots said lion, describes how it falls, skins it and then proceeds to toss back some wine and dates - supremely happy with life. Oh and by the way, this lovely skin will make a great cape for Lord Hoity-Toity. There are many such scenes that were almost unbearable for me to read.

Overall, this was a worthy read. I am left with some conflicting emotions about the author for sure. And I can't say I always found this an enjoyable or engaging read - but in the end quite powerful and sad. ( )

Excellent

a book that changed my life. ( )

There are few such brilliant examples of a story that melts landscape and lives together in perfect poetic balance than Out of Africa. Its opening pages, with Dinesen's quiet voice inviting us into a vast, ancient landscape are especially wonderful. If you've only seen the movie, you're really missing out on a soul-fulfilling masterpiece. ( )

Den fantastiske og fantasifulde bog om Afrika ( )

Out of Africa is Karen Blixen's memoir about her years in Africa, writing as Isak Dinesen. She recounts the world of Africa, specifically Kenya. It is, like the England of her friend Denys Finch-Hatton, "a world that no longer existed" even then and certainly as she left it. The memoir is a slow read, yet a book with prose in which you can luxuriate, or languish perhaps as it seems to mirror the mammoth African landscape. Reading like a pastoral novel, the narrator interested me with her myriad experiences. It presents people, cultures, landscape, and wildlife through her eyes, sometimes noble, sometimes paternal. The culture of the various tribes and religions with whom she had contact on her coffee farm became almost real, so that as I read certain moments became funny or sad or wistful. The reader comes to view animals differently, the fecundity of life struck me particularly. The different forces at work are both natural and foreign; the paradoxical nature of the presence of two churches (Roman Catholic and Church of Scotland); they are sometimes presented as working for good yet other times in conflict with each other. The memoir is truly literate and the importance of books and writing is evident throughout. Early in the memoir she tries to explain her writing a book to a native, while near the end of her stay as she is selling off the furniture and other estate provisions there is a poignant moment when, as she sits on her remaining books, she comments:
Books in a colony play a different part in your existence from what they do in Europe; there is a whole side of your life which they alone take charge of ... you feel more grateful to them, or more indignant with them, than you will ever do in civilized countries.
Blixen's memoir of this "uncivilised" land is both memorable and effective in sweeping the reader away into a very different world. Definitely a worthwhile read. ( )

2873 Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen (read 2 Jun 1996) This is a well-written account of some of the author's experiences in Kenya, where she ran a coffee farm. I was not greatly interested in the book, and was glad when I finished it. The book evokes some nice images of Africa, but Dinesen says things like "all natives do this," etc.; awfully politically incorrect today. She also shot lions, etc. It was a different time--the book was published in 1937. But I'm glad I read the book. (When Hemingway was given the Nobel Prize in 1952 he said Dinesen should have gotten it.) ( )

very difficult to read because of the style of writing but still one of my personal favourites ( )

http://www.dllab.caltech.edu/~adami/b... ( )

One of the most beautiful and evocative opening sentences I have ever read. ( )

I really enjoyed this book, and love it for its beautiful prose. ( )

"I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills." Out of Africa is one of my favorite books. Dineson painted such a great portrait of the land, and its people. She learned so much from them and had such great respect for them. I think I'll read it again. ( )