Customer Reviews

Out of Africa

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A quintessential, lyrical love poem to East Africa. Karen Blixen's years of joy, discovery and struggle unfold beautifully in "Out of Africa"...which she wrote years later (under the pseudonym Isak Denesen) after returning to her native Denmark. What is absent from the book which one finds in the Oscar-winning film are the relationship struggles with her long-time companion Dennys Finch Hatton. Here she keeps her focus on the many friends, employees and characters she met along the way in the operation of her coffee plantation during the early 1900s...and avoids writing romantically about Finch Hatton. Her love affair with Africa though is beautifully and eloquently expressed throughout "Out Of Africa." Those readers who may be interested in reading more about her and Finch Hatton might be interested in reading her "Letters From Africa."

"Out Of Africa" is essential reading for those contemplating a journey to Kenya or Tanzania. It reads like a very colorful and sometimes haunting work of fiction, and is all the more fascinating because this remarkable woman and writer actually experienced it all.

It's amazing how each media gives a completely different feel of this fabulous book. Dinesen's book gets 5 stars. The movie gets 5 stars for telling the stories in the book as well as its beautiful handling of the relationship between Karen and Denys. The audiotape of the book would get 5 stars as well, if it was unabridged. Julie Harris gives me goosebumps (in a good way!)

If you want the full version of Out of Africa, this is not the audio book for you - its abridged.

Upon hearing of this book from catcher in the Rye I decided to read it on a whim. Isak Dinesen's love for the land that she called home shown through in every remarkable story she told about her farm. The smell, feel, look, and even life of the land was so wonderfuly painted that I lost myself in it. I found myself not wanting to stop reading, but dreading the approaching end of the book. A must read for those who love to travel even if it is only in their minds.

how can the reader not adore her? ten stars for karen blixen........and 100 for africa........where we honeymoned in 1970. i went back to nairobi with izak dinesen.

Isak Dinesen's novel Out of Africa is a recollection of her time spent in Africa while struggling to cope with the immensely different cultures and struggling to run a coffee farm at too high of an altitude. This book is a collection of her stories most of them about her adventures shared with lover Denys Finch-Hatton. Many of the stories are very dangerous, like when they go lion hunting. These stories show the wild side that Dinesen posses. These stories are in no chronological order and at times make the book hard to follow. The best part of the book is the astounding imagery used. The imagery describes the breathtaking views from the on top the Ngong hills and allows you to feel the lack of oxygen, smell the coffee plants and feel the strong African sun beating down upon your skin. The down side to this book is, even after experiencing many adventurers with Dinesen you will probably feel that you do not know much about her personality. This is due to lack of character development since she is telling the story and never describes herself. You do however learn about the struggle she faces being a European woman living in a minority, in a place with very different and diverse cultures. She has to adapt to these cultures and even though she finds her European traditions very different from those of the Africans, she realizes that there is some common ground between the two. Even though this book can be at times hard to follow I highly recommend reading it. The magnificent imagery makes up for the down sides to the book and causes you to realize why Dinesen fell in love with Africa. You will probably find yourself falling in live with Africa and its people just as Dinesen did. A truly remarkable book.

This book is not longer than other books, but it is not a fast read. It is not such that you cannot put it down. Yet it is the best book I have ever read. The language is precise and elegant in the way it makes you picture and feel the mood of the places and situations described. It is a book you will remember and read again.

Since she herself wrote the english and danish editions (i.e. the two are as she wanted them to be) my comments should apply equally well to the english edition.

For anyone who's ever had to leave somewhere and never forgotten it, this is a must read.

You really get a strong sense of heartache here when Blixen is forced to give up her plantation toward the end of the book. I think the final pages of this story are some of the saddest ever written in literature. And yes, you can call someone's memoirs literature.
While the fine film version is based on three books, this is the definitive, haunting one which expertly, more than any visual medium, describes what it's like to be possessed by a place. More than Blixen being in Africa, this is more like Africa being in Blixen.

Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) has been elevated to star status by the feminists for her independent stance and courage, but don't read this book because of that. Don't look for the tragic story of her misguided marriage and the heartbreak and barrenness it brought her, or for descriptions of her love affair with adventurer Denys Finch-Hatton. None of that appears here.

Instead, "Out of Africa" is a storytelling book woven in the imaginative Danish style. Dinesen's finely tuned sensitivity is revealed here, as well as her (again typically Danish) well-developed gift for friendship with many kinds of people. In her case this gift extends to African animals as well, like Lulu, the beautiful gazelle who graced her plantation for years.

Her descriptions of the Kenya of her day are exquisitely written, factual and magical at the same time. Africa is the star of the book, not Dinesen herself, not the tribespeople or the colonials, not her struggles with raising coffee in land "a little too high", nor her political dealings with the government officials. Her writing evokes the Africa she knew well and loved deeply.

I think that when someone writes his/her memories or an autobiography, more than sharing an experience with the readers he / she wants to come to terms with something that happened and Writing can be a very helpful shink sometimes. When it comes to "Out Of Africa", it seems that in the whole book Karen Blixen -- aka Isak Dinesen or Tania Blixen or Pierre Andrezel -- is trying to come to terms with the lost of her farm in Nariobi.

In my opinion, the last part is the most important a nd I had the feeling that all the others are a preparation for what would happen. The novel bounces between naive humor and native costumes in Africa. It is very clear that the writer is deeply in love with the continent, so it is not possible to have an anlytical approach to the subjet. But, of course, we have to keep in mind that she is telling us part of her live, so who would be able to be analytical ? the writing is nice, but sometimes heavy and boring. It came a time while reading that I had the feeling I was 'reading' in circles -- I mean it seemed that I'd been reading the same thing over and over again. But I think I could see her point: she wants to tell the more experiences and life in Africa she can. I liked the first pages vey much, they are very lyrical and funny somehow, but after a time all these things become boring and very hard to be followed.

Anyway, the book can be read as a prortrait of the portrait of the colonialism in Africa and its impact on natives's lives. But I wonder how accurate it is. We cannot forget that the story is told by an European's point of view, and many times she addmits not undertanding many costumes of the natives.

However, I cannot forget to mention the high points of the book. It is very admirable to see a woman living and managing a farm by herslf in such a hostile continent. It is very interesting to see how she tackle with so many problems that crop up.

All in all, it is not the kind of reading for eveybody. Many people may find hard to follow it, once there is no plot, nor actually a story, but many memories which are much more linked by their subject than by the chronology.