You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
So beautifully written, so beautifully read, and so very, very racist. At one point, Blixen wants to put an injured native boy "out of his misery" like a suffering farm animal. Spoiler alert: he survives. [The film's focus is the author's romance with the pilot, which is small part of this narrative, although his death coincides with the sale of the farm and her departure from (British East) Africa.] I interpret that the lions have the last laugh over the bloody pilot.
This book is second to none for visual imagery. I feel like I just got back from a trip to Africa. I had read this a long time ago, but I was literally craving this book, so I read it again. I love it. Plain and simple.
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Not a true memoir in the linear sense. A good "pick it up, read some, put it down" book. My friend Elizabeth's copy was heralded by some international literary circle as a must read of the century or some such. I can see it's place of importance at the time but I think it's a little lost in translation. She gives you a lot of detail about the natives and their plight but little information about herself. It was enjoyable.
Interesting historical book. Should be called "Out of Kenya" or "Out of the Ngong Hills". Africa is a continent not a country.
This wasn't even half as good as West With The Night. The author has a few nice turns of phrase, but her style lacked consistency. I got the sense that she saw herself as better than and really separate from Africa and those that lived there (natives and colonists alike). I found this to be really distasteful and I felt judged her very harshly. I was so enthralled by tales of Beryl Markham's exploits (both in memoir and in fiction) and I hoped for some sense of the vivid Africa I found in those, this was a huge disappointment.
Jeg rett og slett elsket boka. "Jeg hadde en farm i Afrika ved foten av fjellet Ngong". Boka hadde meg fra første setning. Nå er jeg kanskje over gjennomsnittet interessert i Afrika etter å ha besøkt flere land der nede allerede, og jeg har lest min fair share av bøker fra kolonitiden. Men denne står over alle de andre. Kan ikke anbefales høyt nok.
This book is often listed as must read when visiting Kenya, and Karen Blixen's house is a well visited site in Nairobi. Instead of now being surrounded in farmland, it is in the fashionable suburb of Karen, surrounded by fancy houses (with guards outside), restaurants, and a golf course.
Some passages and lines from this story are confronting in its language and description of local people - they have clearly not lasted the test of time (thankfully).
However, Dinesen clearly has love for the Kenyan landscape and its people and I tried to read this book as a product of its time - which made it an enjoyable and whimsical description of Kenya in the early 1900s.
Some passages and lines from this story are confronting in its language and description of local people - they have clearly not lasted the test of time (thankfully).
However, Dinesen clearly has love for the Kenyan landscape and its people and I tried to read this book as a product of its time - which made it an enjoyable and whimsical description of Kenya in the early 1900s.
adventurous
emotional
reflective
slow-paced