Out of Africa tells the story of a farm that the narrator once had in Africa. The farm is located at the foot of the Ngong hills outside of Nairobi...
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Dec 25, 2007
blue-collar mind
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I start with the famous paragraph:
"If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?"
I More...
"If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?"
I More...
Dec 09, 2007
El
rated it: 
Having not seen the movie or read the book, but remembering hearing about the movie that Out of Africa is one of the greatest love stories ever told I went into the reading thinking just that. I was already picturing Meryl Streep and Robert Redford because of the popularity of the movie (though my movie tie-in copy of the book probably did not help).
It took me 70 pages to realize that there is no specific story here, that the book is Isak Dinesen's (pseudonym for Baroness Karen Blix More...
It took me 70 pages to realize that there is no specific story here, that the book is Isak Dinesen's (pseudonym for Baroness Karen Blix More...
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Sep 25, 2010
Put A
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"But the trouble is not as you think now, that we have put up obstacles too high for you to jump, and how could we possibly do that, you great leaper?"
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Jun 12, 2008
Carol
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I cried four times while reading this book. For the beauty of the writing (fireflies), the sentiment (the zoo animals, lulu) and for gratitude that this woman existed and wrote these words down. It's my favorite type of writing - descriptive and evocative. She is able to make me feel like I am there with her. I think she noticed and felt so much that she had to be a writer.
I also admire her and how she lived her life. This was a strong woman who seemed to keep a sense of innocence t More...
I also admire her and how she lived her life. This was a strong woman who seemed to keep a sense of innocence t More...
Jan 15, 2009
Nicole
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I picked this book up after a few years of looking at it on my book shelf, and I had a hard time putting it down. The memoir is organized non-chronologically in a series of stories you can imagine the author telling guests over tea or a glass of wine later in life. The author's tone is at times uncomfortably elitist/arrogant, although I assume you need a very healthy amount of confidence to live the way she did in Africa. Learning her views on race and class in colonial Africa is one of the m
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Aug 05, 2011
Yunyi
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First I must say that this book is not for modern entertainment. It was a book Blixen wrote for herself. Only those who are interested in her "personally", or her unusual life experience, can be patient enough to finish the book.
Inside this book, Blixen recalled her life in Africa, when she had a farm at foot of Ngong Hills, Kenya. Very differently from the movie, she didn't mention any of her private life. She only had one sentence for her husband, and about Denys Finch Hatt More...
Inside this book, Blixen recalled her life in Africa, when she had a farm at foot of Ngong Hills, Kenya. Very differently from the movie, she didn't mention any of her private life. She only had one sentence for her husband, and about Denys Finch Hatt More...
May 26, 2011
Anne
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OUT OF AFRICA = 1937
SHADOWS ON THE GRASS = 1962
This is the true story written by Karen Blixen of her life in Africa, where she "had a farm, at the foot of the Ngong Hills". While the movie took snap shots of her experiences, her book tells the story of all the characters and places she knew while living 40 miles from Nairobi in the Happy Valley. There was a real diversity of people living there during the 1920's and 30's, and although Blixen knew of them, she s More...
Mar 02, 2011
Natalie
rated it:
Some authors ooze pure poetry.
I always have a hard time starting reviews but the place to start in this one is how it made me feel...when I read this book it put me into a sort of dream state. It reads as a series of heart breaking yet extremely fond/touching/moving/emotional/cathartic memories of a time and place that made Karen Blixen come alive.
It is a diary - a short quip of random memories in no specific order. And with no specific plot.
I cried an More...
I always have a hard time starting reviews but the place to start in this one is how it made me feel...when I read this book it put me into a sort of dream state. It reads as a series of heart breaking yet extremely fond/touching/moving/emotional/cathartic memories of a time and place that made Karen Blixen come alive.
It is a diary - a short quip of random memories in no specific order. And with no specific plot.
I cried an More...
Jun 14, 2010
Lynnda
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Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass contains some of the most elegantly written prose I have read. The book is part autobiography and part remininescence of Karen Blixen's years of running a coffee plantation in Kenya.
She arrived in Africa before World War I and returned to Denmark shortly before World War II, so the world in her book is far removed from our own. The book contains no premis, no plot, and no moral. Yet, her writing makes the place come so alive that I expected to More...
She arrived in Africa before World War I and returned to Denmark shortly before World War II, so the world in her book is far removed from our own. The book contains no premis, no plot, and no moral. Yet, her writing makes the place come so alive that I expected to More...
Oct 29, 2009
Andrew
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This is the volume to read because “Out of Africa” was written in 1937 about Dinesen’s time running her coffee plantation from 1913 to 1931. But “Shadows in the Grass” tells lots of small tales about the same characters in her life and was written decades later (in 1960) with small tales of cross-cultural experience – and some stories of what happened to people that she knew in Kenya.
Unlike her “gothic” and aristocratic style of fiction, these are down-to-earth and more like Hemingw More...
Unlike her “gothic” and aristocratic style of fiction, these are down-to-earth and more like Hemingw More...
Jul 04, 2010
Martha
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page 96: "The ideas of justice of Europe and Africa are not the same and those of the one world are unbearable to the other. To the African there is but one way of counterbalancing the catastrophes of existence, it shall be done by replacement: he does not look for the motive of an action. Whether you lie in wait for your enemy and cut his throat in the dark; or you fell a tree, and a thoughtless stranger passes by and is killed: so far as punishment goes, to the Native mind, it is the s
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Apr 28, 2011
Brittany
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I had seen the movie adaptation of this book and loved it for the landscape. It's a poor advertisement for the book. The landscape is still there, but the story is almost completely different. While the movie is very overtly a love story between a man and a woman (and a pretty good one) the book is a love story between a woman and a continent. The man who is her lover in the movie appears in the book, but she never explicitly states that he is her lover, and she certainly never discusses the det
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Nov 27, 2010
Misty
rated it:
I read Out of Africa as part of a bookclub, and I have to admit that I was't looking forward to it. By the time I started reading it, I had a week until the bookclub meeting, and I doubted that the book would grab me enough to finish it in time.
So I was surprised when I went to the book store to pick it up how readable it was from Page 1. Motivated by the desire to finish it before the meeting, I got through it pretty quickly. But when that motivation went away (the meeting was cance More...
So I was surprised when I went to the book store to pick it up how readable it was from Page 1. Motivated by the desire to finish it before the meeting, I got through it pretty quickly. But when that motivation went away (the meeting was cance More...
Dec 04, 2011
Nancy
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It was really interesting to read about the experiences of a European woman living on the "frontier" of Africa at the beginning of the 20th century, especially since I know very little about the continent or its people, or the time period for that matter.
At one point, Dinesen talks about a grumpy old Danish man who lived on her farm in Africa: "Old Knudsen, although he would sometimes sing of the sailor's bride who loves the waves, in his heart had a deep mistrust of More...
At one point, Dinesen talks about a grumpy old Danish man who lived on her farm in Africa: "Old Knudsen, although he would sometimes sing of the sailor's bride who loves the waves, in his heart had a deep mistrust of More...
Nov 25, 2011
Lisa
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Just beautiful, especially her descriptions of the natural world, animals and birds and landscape. Her writing about the natives, well... it's of its time and place, certainly, which is to say wide-eyed unabashedly colonial, but not quite over the line of condescending, so the only thing to do is take it for what it is and keep reading. Dinesen was a woman of dualities, and she mostly dealt with them by expressing them and stopping right there: She loved and respected the majesty and the beauty
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Dec 26, 2011
Jaime
rated it:
This woman knew how to slap a sentence together.
Also, this is testament to how important it is to give a book a second, third, or even fourth chance: I started Out of Africa on three separate occasions over the course of several years and couldn't make any headway. I didn't get it, I didn't like it, I felt like her prose was too heavy, and I had no visual context for what she was describing. But then, years later, when I picked it up in Tanzania, it flowed through me like water -- a More...
Also, this is testament to how important it is to give a book a second, third, or even fourth chance: I started Out of Africa on three separate occasions over the course of several years and couldn't make any headway. I didn't get it, I didn't like it, I felt like her prose was too heavy, and I had no visual context for what she was describing. But then, years later, when I picked it up in Tanzania, it flowed through me like water -- a More...
Mar 13, 2009
Avary
rated it:
This is the ultimate memoir on colonial East Africa. Having read numerous biographies of Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen, I definitely call this is a fictionlized memoir -- somewhat like Hemingway's posthumous True at First Light. In my opinion, this approach makes a better book: conveying the truth and aura of a period, country, and people through embelished individual memories. I like the way she lets her thoughts wander far from the particular incident she is describing. She is truly a good storyt
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Sep 12, 2011
Salvatore
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Karen Blixen is a personal hero. What a life. And yet in this book she under sells herself in a majestic way. Her prose is straightforward and faerytale like. She refuses too much entry into her own personal, intimate thoughts but allows for broad strokes when it comes to seeing Natives as equals (or partners perhaps), animal rights, and women in the workforce. Her style though paints a portrait that feels full and rich, an Africa that is neither totally majestic or harsh - a perfect, tempered b
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Aug 03, 2009
Abby
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Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) wrote this collection of memories from her time owning and operating a coffee farm in the Ngong Hills. If you're reading this expecting to see the script from Out of Africa, you'll be sorely disappointed. That was my initial expectation but I stuck with the book and it's stories and as a result, feel like I have a much richer and more detailed picture of life in Kenya in the early 20th century.
Some readers have objected to Blixen's language and descripti More...
Some readers have objected to Blixen's language and descripti More...
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Dec 19, 2010
Bonnie
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Out of Africa is so beautifu!. I love the title, "Ex Africa." Adam & Eve were sent Ex Africa as was Isak Denison/ Karen Blixen.
Her images, discriptions, and narration are unparalleled. Her problems with her "farm in Africa" have helped me through lots, & lots
of hard times. Even knowing, as she did, that there would be no returning for us there. Shadows on the Grass sheds more light on
her difficult and eloquent life. Incredibly beautiful. One of my treasures. I More...
Her images, discriptions, and narration are unparalleled. Her problems with her "farm in Africa" have helped me through lots, & lots
of hard times. Even knowing, as she did, that there would be no returning for us there. Shadows on the Grass sheds more light on
her difficult and eloquent life. Incredibly beautiful. One of my treasures. I More...
Aug 12, 2010
Angela
rated it:
It's impossible to read books from the racist and essentializing past without finding them... racist and essentializing. This is a memoir about Africa and Africans written in the 1930s, its author a wealthy European. If you have trouble reading books by unenlightened generations past, stay away from this one.
With that caveat aside, I loved reading this book. Elegant slow-paced prose, carefully chosen details. It took me a while to read, due to the aforementioned slow pacing, plus the More...
With that caveat aside, I loved reading this book. Elegant slow-paced prose, carefully chosen details. It took me a while to read, due to the aforementioned slow pacing, plus the More...
Aug 21, 2009
Kate
rated it: 
There is not much of a plot in this book. It is just a series of memories and events in her life. Shadows in the Grass is very repetitive of Out of Africa, and not necessary to read.
It is, however, interesting to get insight into the mind of a colonialist. For example, there are times when the things she writes about the Native Africans seem incredibly racist, but you still get the sense that she feels she is being honest, fair, and respectful. In her mind she treated the Natives kin More...
It is, however, interesting to get insight into the mind of a colonialist. For example, there are times when the things she writes about the Native Africans seem incredibly racist, but you still get the sense that she feels she is being honest, fair, and respectful. In her mind she treated the Natives kin More...
Jan 13, 2009
Lynne
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Jeez-those airport bookstores can save your life sometimes. I don't remember where we were traveling to...this is technically not a "jeff's-woman-books" book (normally he has either given me the book to edify and enlighten me-whether he has read it or not, or he has read it himself and highly recommended it...), but I put it on that shelf because he loves the movie so much. "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills..." Reading this book led me to Karen Blixen
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Apr 08, 2010
Molly
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Ok, disclaimer, I only read "Out of Africa" and not "Shadows on the Grass". In this book Karen Blixen (pen name Isak Dinesen) mostly makes observations about the African natives living on her farm, farm life, and animal life in Nairobi-area Kenya in the years that she lived there, 1917-1931 or thereabouts. there is almost nothing about her personal life at all. She does love to describe the magic of it all in extended prose, which is lovely and poetic at times and boring as s
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Feb 12, 2009
Diane
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I've added this since it was one of my all-time favorite books, which I want to re-read again at some point. I loved the movie too. It was very poetic. And some of the scenes and situations are unbelievable. I recall her description of the poor oxen, who worked so hard and also her descriptions of wild dogs, a giraffe on a ship and childbirth. It is both historic and romantic. At the end, the two main characters have learned from each other, she to be more free and he to be more caring and
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Jan 09, 2012
Erin
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After I finished reading this book, I had a conversation about it with my mother, who had only seen the Robert Redford/Meryl Streep film adaptation. I guess the movie explains a lot more of the background than the book does, because if I didn't read the back cover, I would never have known how the author came to run a farm in africa.
The first few chapters sort of wander. Stories are told that skip around chronologically, and new characters are introduced and quickly forgotten (this cou More...
The first few chapters sort of wander. Stories are told that skip around chronologically, and new characters are introduced and quickly forgotten (this cou More...
Jul 14, 2011
Lynn
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My experience of this book was diminished by two things: 1.) I read Beryl Markham's book first and 2.) the movie adaptation is among my top five (three?) favorite movies. These two things would not inherently have diminished my experience of the book, however: Beryl Markham's book is about many of the same people who lived in more or less the same place at the same time. And her book is the better of the two in my opinion. And what made the movie so compelling is the love story between Kare
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Aug 26, 2011
I have kind of a love/...meh relationship with this book. I bought it book not just because I loved the movie, but because I loved the stories Karen told to Denys and Berkeley. She's portrayed as an incredible storyteller, and I hoped the writing of her original book would be similar. Initially, it was exactly what I'd hoped. Dinesen's voice is clear: slowly paced, but extraordinarily her own, and immediately transporting.
But about 1/3 of the way into the book, I just got bored. Din More...
But about 1/3 of the way into the book, I just got bored. Din More...
Feb 19, 2008
Angela
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What a masterpiece. Out of Africa uses poetry for what is essentially a memoir, tells gently of human tragedies large and small, and records a lovely time that seems even to the author to be magical and impossible, yet it is nonfiction.
Isak Dinesen wrote in her second language - English, just as Josseph Conrad did. She used an assumed name, and even in life in her vanity she went by "Baroness Blixen," even though her marriage to the holder of that name was broken and hi More...
Isak Dinesen wrote in her second language - English, just as Josseph Conrad did. She used an assumed name, and even in life in her vanity she went by "Baroness Blixen," even though her marriage to the holder of that name was broken and hi More...
Apr 15, 2011
Karen
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This is one of my all-time favorite books. Dinesen's poetic language and vivid descriptions of the African people, animals, and landscape still linger in my mind.
"Out on the safaris, I had seen a herd of buffalo, one hundred and twenty-nine of them, come out of the morning mist under a copper sky, one by one, as if the dark and massive, iron-like animals with the mighty horizontally swung horns were not approaching, but were being created before my eyes and sent out as they wer
"Out on the safaris, I had seen a herd of buffalo, one hundred and twenty-nine of them, come out of the morning mist under a copper sky, one by one, as if the dark and massive, iron-like animals with the mighty horizontally swung horns were not approaching, but were being created before my eyes and sent out as they wer
