Out of Africa (Essential Penguin 2) [Paperback]

Karen Blixen (Author)

Book Description

Series: Essential Penguin 2 | Publication Date: February 25, 1999

Karen Blixen went to Kenya in 1914 to run a coffee farm; its failure in 1931 caused her to return to Denmark where she wrote this classic account of her experiences. "Out of Africa" is a celebration of her life there; her friendship with the various people of the area and her sympathetic response to the landscape and animals are drawn with warmth and unusual clarity. Although the book is pervaded by her sense of loss, Karen Blixen looks back with an unsentimental intelligence to portray a way of life that is now gone forever.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Isak Dinesen was the pen-name of Karen Blixen, who was born in Denmark in 1885. After studying art around Europe she married her cousin and together they moved to Kenya to manage a coffee plantation. After their divorce she continued to run the plantation until she was forced to return to Demark in 1931. Her debut publication was Seven Gothic Tales (1934) followed by Out of Africa (1937). Other works include: Winter's Tales (1942) and The Angelic Avengers (1946). Baroness Blixen died in 1962.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books (February 25, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140282610
• ISBN-13: 978-0140282610
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #796,102 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A colonial and emotional passage, December 13, 2009

By 

Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Out of Africa (Essential Penguin 2) (Paperback)

Karen Blixen's African adventure (now Kenya) as a colonial Master and a coffee planter brought her in immediate contact with the heart and the mind of the Natives.
Her book is a heartrending but also a violent tale about the laws of the white man, the fight against nature (for water), prejudice, customs and inveterate beliefs (healing), and also about the mysterious and sacred moments in the life of the Natives (e.g., dancing).

Life before colonization
The extreme violence of life before colonization is expressed in a Masai dream: `in the old days it was good fun. When the Kikuyu or the Wakamba had got a fat piece of land and fat herds, we came to them. First we killed all men and male children with steel. We ate the sheep and goats. Then before going away, we killed off the women with wood.'

Colonization
The white man stole the black man's land by creating a `Protectorate'. According to the latter's laws, the Natives could not own land (!). But as Karen Blixen says, 'it is more than their land you take away. It is their past, their roots and their identity.'
The Natives were also bombarded by competing Missions: `the intolerance that one Christian Church showed towards the other.'
The treatment of the blacks by the white colons was nothing more than a master/slave relation.

The Natives
In some aspects, the white man filled in the mind of the Natives the place God takes in the minds of the colons.
For the Natives, something written was taken as an evangel.
Their wealth was their livestock, but also `eroticism (which) runs through their entire existence. It is the number and quality of the wives which decides a man's success and happiness in life, and his own worth.'
The fact that `some nations gave away their maidens to their husbands for nothing' was for them incomprehensible. More, `one tribe was so depraved as to pay the bridegroom. Where was their self-respect?'
In judicial affairs, the Natives didn't look for the motive of the crime. The damage done (even in the case of murder) had to be compensated by replacement (cattle).

Karen Blixen's book sketches an objective, but `human' picture of, all things considered, a shameless period of exploitation in the history of mankind.

Highly recommended.