‘Out of Africa’ by Karen Blixen

Book Review by Janet Walton

‘Out of Africa’ is Baroness Karen Blixen’s memoir of her time in Kenya from 1914 to 1931. It was written under the pseudonym of Isak Dinesen. After studying art at Copenhagen, Paris and Rome she married her cousin Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke in 1914. They went together to Africa to start a six-thousand-acre coffee plantation in the foothills near Nairobi. She remained on the farm after they divorced in 1921. But she was visited and supported by her lover Denys Finch-Hutton a big game hunter.

In Africa, “I learned how to tell tales,” she was heard to say many years later. The book was written after her return to Denmark and published in 1937. She is a master storyteller. And a woman whom John Updike called “one of the most picturesque and flamboyant literary personalities of the century.”

The Book

The book was adapted into a screenplay by the writer Kurt Luedtke. It was directed by Sidney Pollack. And then released in 1985 starred Robert Redford as Denys Finch-Hutton and Meryl Streep as Karen Blixen. The film went on to to receive 28 film awards.

The writing is compelling. Although it is dated in places, it pulls you into the story from the first paragraph:

“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.”

Karen’s Writing Talent

You are drawn initially into her love of the land as they plan and plant the tobacco alongside the farm workers. You can picture the land, the wind and rain in all its guises. The plants are welcoming as they grow. And hostile as the rain is delayed. And then destroyed by swarms of grasshoppers. Over time Karen really notices the people who live on her land – those who work in the house, the workers caring for her crops and the staff who become her friends. She writes eloquently about the differences between the ethnicities noticing the tensions. And she aims to treat everyone fairly at a time when that was not the norm.

What I Love about ‘Out of Africa’

I loved her descriptions of the people, how and where they lived. Although I have never visited Kenya I could close my eyes and picture the scene clearly. Whatever she was writing about, it is vivid. The tensions between people and the frustrations with an unknown culture are clear. And it is clear that she had an abiding deep relationship with the land. 

Denys Finch-Hutton dies and the farm starts to fail. You can feel her distress and her grieving at leaving this beloved land. But there is alsonan eventual acknowledgement that it is the right time to leave. You are drawn into the staff and friends dismay that she is leaving but they also help her pack and sort out this enormous six thousand acre farm. She negotiates with the government to resettle her Kikuyu squatters onto their own land a feat which was very unusual in those days.

Finally

‘Out of Africa’ is a marvellous book! Once you get used to the language, which is slightly dated, it will take you on an emotional journey. A brave woman’s time in a world dominated by men and upheaval, a great yearning to be out on the land of Africa,  in the hills or walking the plains amongst the wild animals. Do yourself a favour and read ‘Out of Africa’.

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