Truman Capote regarded Out of Africa as ‘one of the most beautiful books of the twentieth century’. Its author, Karen Blixen (née Dinesen), was born in Denmark in 1885, to parents with connections to the aristocracy. She fell in love with her second cousin; however her feelings were not reciprocated, and she ended up marrying his twin brother in 1914. They started a coffee farm outside of Nairobi, in what is now Kenya.

The following year Blixen caught syphilis from her husband. They separated in 1921, and divorced in 1925. Blixen’s affair with British aristocrat Denys Finch-Hatton became the subject of a Hollywood film in 1985, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.

Finch-Hatton died in a plane crash in 1931, and Blixen also had to cope with the bankruptcy of the coffee farm. Returning to Denmark she devoted herself to writing, under the pen name Isak Dinesen. She decided to use English, in preference to Danish, to reach a wider readership. Out of Africa was first published in 1937, very successfully. Later Blixen received nominations for the Nobel Prize for Literature, but lost out to Ernest Hemingway and Albert Camus.

Out of Africa does not fit snugly into any specific category: it isn’t an autobiography; nor is it a novel. Rather, it consists of a series of memorable anecdotes. Dinesen liked to think of herself as a storyteller in the tradition of Scheherazade, the narrator of Arabian Nights. The African landscape, native peoples, and animals are described evocatively, conveying a sense of paradise gained - and then perhaps lost…

Content last updated: 30/06/2005

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