Isak Dinesen (1885–1962)

Contrary to what my mother remembered about this book, this is not a novel, but a memoir, a collection of vignettes and sketches about the author's life in Africa as a female coffee farmer. Since my mom insists the story is a sad romantic story, I suspect that the book and the movie are not really the same story, and I was rather relieved that the book was about life in Kenya, not a sad, sappy love story. I found it especially interesting that not only is the book published under a male pseudonym, but there are also hardly any points in the whole book where the gender of the narrator is explicitly mentioned.… (more)

Her most religious collection. Religious in the sense that she thematizes religion, and especially Christianity, in nearly every story. Not religious in the sense of spiritual. Whereas her Biblical sources were, in previous collections, more implicit, she here places them front and center. It's strange that she chose to call this book "Last Tales," as she actually continued publishing books after this one, roughly half her total output, in fact. Clearly the three volumes that precede "Last Tales" are her greatest achievement, but "Anecdotes of Destiny" was yet to come, and with it "Babette's Feast," and, according to Robert Langbaum, she even knew that she had at least one more collection ("Anecdotes of Destiny) before she even offered "Last Tales" to her publisher. I gave "Last Tales" five stars--probably overrating it, but it's a book I reread and continue to find remarkable for the beauty of its language and the keen turns of thought. It's true that, aesthetically, she returns, almost obsessively, to the same tacks she developed in "Seven Gothic Tales," but for me lack of novelty is not necessarily a flaw.… (more)

A classic first published in 1937 - Out of Africa is a memoir of the author’s experiences and adventures while living in Africa and managing a coffee plantation from 1914 to 1931, after her separation from her husband, (also said to be her cousin, Baron Bror von Blixon-Finecke). The book was published under her pseudo-name of Isak Dinesen (nee Karen Blixon). She doesn’t really go into details about the coffee plantation itself, except that she owned 6000 acres, of which 600 acres were planted with coffee trees at 600 trees per acres. She doesn’t even mention her marriage at all. Her only reference to her ex-husband that gave any clue to his character was a remark that if she had owned the plantation herself, she would not have spent and wasted away the profits. It is rumored that he also had many affairs that may have destroyed their marriage, but Karen doesn’t mention this in her memoir. She developed a lasting friendship and love affair with pilot and hunter, Denys Finch Hatton.

What really stood out for me in this writing was the cultural differences between the Native Africans and the British who were migrating and changing the rules, the laws, and the landscape of the African continent. She said the native mind works in strange ways, and you will see that as you read some of the dialogue between her and them.

A big portion of the Blixon’s land was occupied by “squatters”, or natives, of the Kikuyus tribe who had been there for several generations, many even born there. She tells of many personal stories and interactions with these Native servants, at times even sounding a little patronizing, herself. They were allowed to squat in return for work on the farm for a certain amount of days; she also paid them enough to pay for their hut-taxes, which she collected for the Nairobi government.

With the collapse of the coffee industry, she was not prepared and was forced to sell out and leave Africa behind and return to her home country in Denmark. All the land was purchased by a large corporation and was eventually to be sectioned out for housing and such, which meant the Natives had lost their support and were forced to move onto the reservations. The Ngong Hills today is a hiking resort, a place I would love to visit if it weren’t for all the friction between the Africans and whites today in Africa.

Her only dream had been to return to Africa and possibly open a small little hospital of sorts out in the Masai Reservation to help the sick, but she didn’t make as much money as had anticipated with the publishing of “Out of Africa” in 1937. She had to let her dreams die, and as the approach of WWII put Denmark in dire straits, she decided to just focus on writing to pass the time. She died in 1962, at age 77, of malnutrition, two years after publishing the follow-up to “Out of Africa”, called “Shadows of the Grass”, which spoke of her continued correspondence with a few of her closest and faithful Native servants, and was published in 1960.

MOVIE: Out of Africa (1985), starring Robert Redford, the pilot, hunter, and lover, and Meryl Streep as Karen Blixon. 4-star movie...a great love story! Of course, you will still learn more of the Native cultures from the book.… (more)