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Tea on the Blue Sofa: Whispers of Love and Longing from Africa
A passionate, bittersweet memoir of a love cruelly cut short, set in the splendour of East Africa.
Natasha Illum Berg is secretly in love. As she waits for her married lover in her beautiful house in the African countryside, she reflects on her Danish childhood, her African present, the tides of her life. She has been changed forever by meeting her lover – her previous existence, her family, her journey to Africa and her other lovers seem to belong to a different person. But one evening, on his way to visit her, her lover is shot, murdered, outside her gates. As their love was clandestine, so her mourning for him must be private too. How can she come to terms with a sadness that cannot be expressed? To whom will she turn when she must never reveal the truth of her mourning?
Tea on a Blue Sofa introduces an extraordinary and distinctive new voice. The book is full of wonderful images and scenes, peopled by vivid characters. But, above all, this love letter gives off a searing, intense emotion that leaps off the page, a sadness that is as deep and profound as literature can provide.
Natasha Illum Berg is secretly in love. As she waits for her married lover in her beautiful house in the African countryside, she reflects on her Danish childhood, her African present, the tides of her life. She has been changed forever by meeting her lover – her previous existence, her family, her journey to Africa and her other lovers seem to belong to a different person. But one evening, on his way to visit her, her lover is shot, murdered, outside her gates. As their love was clandestine, so her mourning for him must be private too. How can she come to terms with a sadness that cannot be expressed? To whom will she turn when she must never reveal the truth of her mourning?
Tea on a Blue Sofa introduces an extraordinary and distinctive new voice. The book is full of wonderful images and scenes, peopled by vivid characters. But, above all, this love letter gives off a searing, intense emotion that leaps off the page, a sadness that is as deep and profound as literature can provide.
133 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 3, 2015
Short though this book is, I'd actually recommend doing as I didn't and reading it in pieces, not all at once. Illum Berg is Swedish originally, but she moved to Kenya to pursue a career in game hunting. There's very little direct fact in the book, though; rather, she wanders and reminisces and talks in circles and metaphors.
It would probably drive me batty were it a longer book, but...it worked for me here. Illum Berg's lover (a white Kenyan, or so the Internet tells me; she tells us very little about him) was shot and killed just outside her home, and the book is like an extended letter to him, one full of secrets that the reader is not meant to unlock.
Scores left unsaid here, and I expect that I'd also love it if she put things down in a more linear fashion, with more information and detail for the poor reader. But that's not the point here, I suppose. I also wonder -- I came away with very little understanding of their relationship, except that he was probably married, hence the illicit nature of the pairing (which the Internet confirms). Part of me wonders how long they would have lasted, really...he was married; the impossibility of it all might have added to the appeal; they hadn't been together all that long, and Illum Berg talks of struggling to find happiness within the strictures of more 'conventional' relationships. What might or might not have happened with them, of course, is pure conjecture -- curiosity always does get the better of me.
Something of a love-it-or-hate-it book, I think.
It would probably drive me batty were it a longer book, but...it worked for me here. Illum Berg's lover (a white Kenyan, or so the Internet tells me; she tells us very little about him) was shot and killed just outside her home, and the book is like an extended letter to him, one full of secrets that the reader is not meant to unlock.
Scores left unsaid here, and I expect that I'd also love it if she put things down in a more linear fashion, with more information and detail for the poor reader. But that's not the point here, I suppose. I also wonder -- I came away with very little understanding of their relationship, except that he was probably married, hence the illicit nature of the pairing (which the Internet confirms). Part of me wonders how long they would have lasted, really...he was married; the impossibility of it all might have added to the appeal; they hadn't been together all that long, and Illum Berg talks of struggling to find happiness within the strictures of more 'conventional' relationships. What might or might not have happened with them, of course, is pure conjecture -- curiosity always does get the better of me.
Something of a love-it-or-hate-it book, I think.
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July 21, 2025Not for me
July 24, 2011
This book turned out to be just what I needed to read in a perfect streak of mediocre books.
The language was so beautiful and poetic - in a way I never thought danish could be!
It raises so many questions and is a perfect picture of life loved, lived and lost...
The language was so beautiful and poetic - in a way I never thought danish could be!
It raises so many questions and is a perfect picture of life loved, lived and lost...
July 13, 2014
This is a memoir of a love lost, the author writes this in the form of a diary, giving us pieces of her thoughts going back and forth from her youth in Sweden to her life in Africa. She writes in a very poetic way, which gives it a beautiful tone but also makes one stop and think.
June 13, 2013
This reads like a poem, or a dream, a beautiful river of words that carries you through love and loss.
January 28, 2015
Not sure I fully understand it, but I did enjoy the writing.
July 8, 2026
This intimate—sometimes idiosyncratic—memoir about love seeks to set the record straight on a tabloid murder case. Illum Berg is a conservationist and hunter, an important fact to know going in. Our narrator is a woman hesitant to love, her own spirit her most valuable possession. Her relationship with a British painter reads as the genuine union of two souls finding, in each other, what they had long been seeking.
Forced to mourn the shocking death of her lover in secret after he is killed in a robbery, she explores the universality of emotional topography: the erosion of memory, trust, and the literal ground beneath her feet. Her reflections on hunting, tabloid journalism, and bullfighting infuse the prose with a quiet battle of wills, but also a search for equilibrium between life and death.
As a white woman living in Tanzania, her self-awareness becomes an anchor. She approaches her adopted home with curiosity, humility, and a desire to understand rather than possess; that same lively instinct shapes her attempts to name, classify, and ultimately exist alongside immense grief.
It’s an uneven work at times: a chapter on malaria felt extraneous, and some of the poetic wordplay tipped into the precious. Still, this is a remarkably thoughtful account of settling and belonging, of loving and remembering. It presents a white perspective on East Africa that feels unusually self-critical and fully realized.
This worked for me on many levels, not simply as a memoir of heartbreak, but as a meditation on how we inhabit both landscapes and each other. A gem—so happy for my random bookstore purchase!
Forced to mourn the shocking death of her lover in secret after he is killed in a robbery, she explores the universality of emotional topography: the erosion of memory, trust, and the literal ground beneath her feet. Her reflections on hunting, tabloid journalism, and bullfighting infuse the prose with a quiet battle of wills, but also a search for equilibrium between life and death.
As a white woman living in Tanzania, her self-awareness becomes an anchor. She approaches her adopted home with curiosity, humility, and a desire to understand rather than possess; that same lively instinct shapes her attempts to name, classify, and ultimately exist alongside immense grief.
It’s an uneven work at times: a chapter on malaria felt extraneous, and some of the poetic wordplay tipped into the precious. Still, this is a remarkably thoughtful account of settling and belonging, of loving and remembering. It presents a white perspective on East Africa that feels unusually self-critical and fully realized.
This worked for me on many levels, not simply as a memoir of heartbreak, but as a meditation on how we inhabit both landscapes and each other. A gem—so happy for my random bookstore purchase!
May 12, 2023
Oerhört vackert!
May 19, 2010
Took from the Auckland meetup last Thurday.
Started this book the other night and am already enjoying the poetic like writing style. Can't wait to see where the story takes me :D I think I know who I'm gonna pass this on to too :-)
I shouldn't have read the extra bits at the end, they my rating go down from a 10 to a 9. For some reason this spoke to me more as a piece of fiction than as an autobiography. No offense to Natasha.
Nevertheless, I still enjoyed this book a lot! The writing style, as I've pointed out already, was incredibly poetic, and I could relate to Anoushka/Natasha's story a lot.
Natasha's love of Africa shone through in this novel, and this captivated me - it's always nice to read a book where the author has such an obvious love for her topic.
Anyway, I'm going to send this off to WingedMan when I return his copy of Swish to him.
Started this book the other night and am already enjoying the poetic like writing style. Can't wait to see where the story takes me :D I think I know who I'm gonna pass this on to too :-)
I shouldn't have read the extra bits at the end, they my rating go down from a 10 to a 9. For some reason this spoke to me more as a piece of fiction than as an autobiography. No offense to Natasha.
Nevertheless, I still enjoyed this book a lot! The writing style, as I've pointed out already, was incredibly poetic, and I could relate to Anoushka/Natasha's story a lot.
Natasha's love of Africa shone through in this novel, and this captivated me - it's always nice to read a book where the author has such an obvious love for her topic.
Anyway, I'm going to send this off to WingedMan when I return his copy of Swish to him.
July 11, 2015
I picked this up at Foyle’s on the January trip to London after the blurbs on the back intrigued me: “story of a passionate love affair”, “heart-breaking true account of mad, intemperate love”, “filled with a searing emotion that burns off the page.” First person narrative; talking to the lover lost (murdered); remembering the moments, each one as they came; gathering memories; filling in the blanks. Thinking of the what-might-have-beens. Recalling what was.
Sad but moving. Occasionally awkward. Concise. Very quick read.
It wasn’t until after I read the notes in the back of the book and googled the author’s name that I learned the details — a true story. But questions remain. Was Tonio murdered as a message to quiet his mother’s research into a previous love triangle murder? Was he simply at the wrong place at the wrong time? Intriguing.
Sad but moving. Occasionally awkward. Concise. Very quick read.
It wasn’t until after I read the notes in the back of the book and googled the author’s name that I learned the details — a true story. But questions remain. Was Tonio murdered as a message to quiet his mother’s research into a previous love triangle murder? Was he simply at the wrong place at the wrong time? Intriguing.
September 1, 2016
“Tik, tak, tik, tak, en dan zijn er de mensen die denken dat tijd iets is wat dingen doet groeien, of juist doet slinken. Maar met de meeste dingen heeft de tijd helemaal niets mee te maken. Duizend jaren kunnen niet die ene seconde ongedaan maken waarin iemand een moordenaar wordt, de rest van mijn leven kan niet de paar maanden van mijn liefde ongedaan maken die wij hebben gekend. De tijd is slechts een toeschouwer, net als ik. Hij geeft niets en hij neemt niets. Wat wonden heelt is vergeetachtigheid, niet de tijd.”
October 21, 2012
IllumBerg's style of prose is fascinating. Rich with metaphor she tells her story of love in a way that captures the true magic of complete passion.
I wanted to read this book over again as soon as I finished.
I wanted to read this book over again as soon as I finished.
April 8, 2012
I never managed to finish it. Not sure if it was just a state of mind i was in at the time but I found it so depressing that I had to stop before I started being deeply effected by it.
July 31, 2012
Beautifully written tale of love & loss in Africa, but I found there were too many metaphors & it took me away from the storyline.
April 30, 2015
Read as part of the 2015 Reading Challenge - A book with a colour in the title
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews