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Out of Africa
Written by Karen Blixen
Publisher Putnam
Published 1937
en
Pages 344
Download 1.3 MB
Out of Africa is a memoir by the Danish author Karen Blixen. The book, first published in 1937, recounts events of the seventeen years when Blixen made her home in Kenya, then called British East Africa. The book is a lyrical meditation on Blixen's life on her coffee plantation, as well as a tribute to some of the people who touched her life there. It provides a vivid snapshot of African colonial life in the last decades of the British Empire. Blixen wrote the book in English and then rewrote it in Danish. The book has sometimes been published under the author's pen name, Isak Dinesen. Karen Blixen moved to British East Africa in late 1913, at the age of 28, to marry her second cousin, the Swedish Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, and make a life in the British colony known today as Kenya. The young Baron and Baroness bought farmland below the Ngong Hills about ten miles (16 km) southwest of Nairobi, which at the time was still shaking off its rough origins as a supply depot on the Uganda Railway. The Blixens had planned to raise dairy cattle, but Bror developed their farm as a coffee plantation instead. It was managed by Europeans, including, at the start, Karen's brother Thomas – but most of the labour was provided by “squatters.” This was the colonial term for local Kikuyu tribespeople who guaranteed the owners 180 days of labour in exchange for wages and the right to live and farm on the uncultivated lands. -Adapted from Wikipedia
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Karen Blixen (17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962) was born Karen Dinesen and came from a wealthy farming/merchant family in Denmark. She married the Baron Bror Blixen after following him to Kenya to start a 6000-acre farm near the Ngong Hills outside Nairobi. Although the marriage did not last, the farm, known as M’Bogani, became the focus of her life and writing for the next seventeen years while she remained in Kenya. Blixen is best known for Out of Africa, an account of her life while living in Kenya, and for one of her stories, Babette's Feast, both of which have been adapted into Academy Award-winning motion pictures. She is also noted, particularly in Denmark, for her Seven Gothic Tales. In Africa, "I learned how to tell tales," she recalled many years later. "The natives have an ear still. I told stories constantly to them, all kinds." Her account of her African adventures, written after she had lost her beloved farm and returned to Denmark, is that of a master storyteller, a woman whom John Updike called "one of the most picturesque and flamboyant literary personalities of the century." -Adapted from Faded Page This book is in the public domain in Tanzania. Check the copyright laws in your country before downloading or distributing.
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Thank you to Faded Page
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