Babette's Feast and Other Stories
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First published in English in 1958, Babette’s Feast and Other Stories brings together five tales by Isak Dinesen, the pen name of Danish writer Karen Blixen, in which ordinary lives are transformed by extraordinary encounters. In the title story, Babette, a French refugee employed by two devout sisters in a remote Norwegian village, spends her lottery winnings preparing an elaborate banquet that challenges the community’s austere understanding of pleasure and virtue. Elsewhere, a young theologian encounters the mysteries of the sea, an actress finds herself caught in the shadow of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and an eccentric millionaire attempts to turn an old sailor’s tale into reality.
Blixen’s stories move between fable, irony and the uncanny, examining artistic creation, sacrifice, destiny and the tension between spiritual restraint and sensual experience. Her intricate plots and poised, almost theatrical prose give each tale the quality of an elegant parable, while leaving room for ambiguity and surprise. Among her final collections of short fiction, Babette’s Feast and Other Stories reveals a writer at the height of her imaginative powers, capable of finding the extraordinary in a meal, a chance encounter or a life shaped by fate.
From the book
“The more one loves, the more one suffers.”
— Isak Dinesen, Babette’s Feast
On Babette’s Feast and Other Stories
“Each of these five stories bears the hallmark of Isak Dinesen.”
— Kirkus Reviews