Product Description
Isak Dinesen takes up the absorbing story of her life in Kenya begun in the unforgettable "Out of Africa", which she published under the name of Karen Blixen. With warmth and humanity these four stories illuminate her love both for the African people, their dignity and traditions, and for the beauty and wildness of the landscape. The first three were written in the 1950s and the last, 'Echoes from the Hills', was written especially for this volume in the summer of 1960 when the author was in her seventies. In all, they provide a moving final chapter to her African reminiscences. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Nothing but a killer
The first chapter about her most loved servent, Farah is good. After that she gets into her absolute LOVE of killing the animals of Africa. She just loves to hunt. If she sees a lion while driving she will stop and kill it. She kills elephants....she kills everything.I couldn't read any more it was disgusting. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

isak dinesen
I have been wanting to read her for a long time,It was worth the wait!Joe

Stunning read
First of all this book has little to do with the movie Out of Africa.
I picked up this book after watching the movie and was surprised not to find the familiar story of Karen and Denys but I discovered what a wonderful story teller Karen Blixen really was.
The book is a set of short stories, autobiographical memoirs that primarily is a description of Africa and the country of Kenya in particular.
I enjoyed this book tremendously. It contains such beautiful, insightful and poetic descriptions of landscapes, the native inhabitants, their traditions.. These stories will transport the reader to a different place and time, to Kenya just as the author experienced it. Very satisfying read.

Once upon a time in Africa
"I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills."

This simple sentence, so ripe with the promise of countless tales, begins Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen (the pen name of Baroness Karen Blixen) whose memoir of running a coffee plantation in Africa between 1914 and 1931 has captured the imagination of countless readers.I had never read the book, but I had seen the movie with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.I liked the movie, but I had always thought the book would be better.

It is.The movie often seemed vague and rambling at times and occasionally lost my attention. The book also rambles, butin a most delightful way.In Out of Africa we have a heartfelt recounting of the wildlife, the weather,the customs, and the many people who shaped Africa in the 1920's and 30's.

To our modern perspective, Dinesen's thoughts and feelings about the native Africans may seem paternalistic and patronizing. In fact, her actions were often viewed by her contemporaries as being overly sympathetic to the native people.She includes many vignettes of Africans, particularly of theKikuyutribe. In each story she seems to capture the depth and the intelligence as well as the poignancy and heartbreak of the native peoples as they made thedifficult adjustment to living among the empire-building European settlers. Particularly disturbing is Dinesen's account of the flogging death of one young African, whose murderer, his white employer, received an outrageously short prison sentence.Such stories are painful to read but important to remember.

On the other hand, Dinesen, like most of her contemporaries seems to have had no problem at all with the idea of shooting Africa's wildlife.Her accounts of safaris are filled with pride as she recounts the many trophies of the hunt.Yet, because she also possesses a poetic soul, she does occasionally lower her rifle, caught up in admiration of beautiful African animals she could not bear to kill.

Dinesen's story is never pedestrian.Not only does she experience many thrilling adventures and make numerous deep and enduring friendships, she is also stirred to a kind of ecstasy in her love of the land and its unique beauty.Many of the passages in the book seem to be breathing poetry on the page.You can feel the deep longing she feels for the land when she finally is forced to leave due to the eventual failure of her farm.

You know that her heart belongs in Africa. When reading Out of Africa,becomingdeeply immersed in the haunting mystery of the place, any reader is sure to feel the ancient pull of Africa as well.

Another title you will love
I loved this book, and if you did too you will love West With the Night by Beryl Markham.If you can get your hands on the illustrated version, even better as it has fantastic photos of Africa from the 1920's.Karen tries admirably to describe Africa - Beryl knocks it out of the park.Absolutely enchanting prose, exciting adventures by air, wonderful atmosphere.Buy it today and be swept away.

In Her Hands Education...Was A Great Noble Conspiracy...Pupils Were By Privilege Admitted
What is Pride ? Is it `Pride' to Review a Classic ?

I've always loved the movie version of `Out of Africa' with Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. Whether it was the character development, or the wild life, or the Mozart throughout the film score, the symbiosis of all of the above consistently moves me & holds my attention. Then there were the excerpted portions of the book I was introduced to in Literature class. Somewhere among the multitude of reviews of this book are plenty of words to describe how I `feel' about the prose and the somewhat dis-similar treatment by the movie.

But who can compete with the authors own words ?

"The discovery of the dark races was to me a magnificent enlargement of all my world."

From the view to promote the perspective of a tribal native, in this country or any other, I'd like to point out that Baroness Karen Blixen/ a.k.a. Isaac Denison has recorded some highly unique perspectives about the Kenya tribal peoples and their respective roles in the predator vs prey aspects of human slavery.

How the Mohammedans played the role of predators in concert with Arab slave traders to capture and sell Africans to the European slave ship masters is treated with pragmatism. The proud people of the Masai game reserve were sometimes assisting the Mohammedans, but if captured and sold themselves were unlikely to survive in captivity. The 'prey' class of social strata, named Kikiyu, who were beneath the 'marriage' qualifications that would suit the upwards-mobility of the Mohammedan women were yet accounted acceptable breeding stock as wives of the Masai, noble and proud.

These variations are irregular to the politically correct assumptions of our society, yet as real as they may be in middle eastern cultures, they were described in pre-World War I central Africa.What the American descendants of Mohammedan Africans might be 'sensitive' to or 'offended' by in our culture were matters of 'pride' to the Kenyans of the post Colonial era leading up to World War II. Some readers might enjoy discovering what praise Baroness Blixen had to report about her Mohammedan servant Farah, or the Holy man from India who visited her farm, or the virtues of the Mohammedan women in obtaining a husband.

Our culture is perfectly content to adopt a presidential canidate for the sake of lauding his skin color, without appreciating any of the virtues of the Kenyan ancestors who brought him to American territory. But this is one author who has uniquely appraised the strengths of the Kenyan people she knew, from living with them and learning to respect and love them. Consider a bit she writes about 'pride',

"...Very proud things were about, and made their presence felt...Pride is faith in the idea that God had, when he made us. A proud man is conscious of the idea, and aspires to realize it. He does not strive towards a happiness, or comfort, which may be irrelevant to God's idea of him. His success is the idea of God, successfully carried through, and he is in love with his destiny...the fulfillment of his fate."

"People who have no pride are not aware of any idea of God in the making of them, and sometimes they make you doubt that there has ever been much of an idea, or else it has been lost, and who shall find it again ? They have got to accept as success what others warrant to be so, and to take their happiness, and even their own selves, at the quotation of the day.They tremble with reason, before their fate."

[she distils a faith like to, but not to be confused as 'Christian' faith, thus]

"Love the pride of God beyond all things, and the pride of your neighbour as your own. The pride of lions: do not shut them up in Zoos. The pride of your dogs: let them not grow fat. Love the pride of your fellow-partisans, and allow them no self-pity."

"Love the pride of the conquered nations, and leave them to honour their father and their mother."

`Out of Africa' is filled with beautiful descriptive prose. But someone also learned from Africa and her people, and was good enough to leave us a chronicle.
... Read more