Out of Africa

First published in 1937, Out of Africa is Karen Blixen’s lyrical memoir of the seventeen years she spent managing a coffee farm in colonial Kenya, writing under the name Isak Dinesen. Beneath the Ngong Hills, she recounts the rhythms of farm life, the changing seasons, the animals and landscapes that shaped her days, and the people whose lives became entwined with her own, including her Somali servant Kamante and her friend Denys Finch Hatton. Rather than following a strictly chronological narrative, Blixen weaves together anecdotes, portraits, and reflections, transforming personal recollection into an elegy for a place she was eventually forced to leave.

Written after her return to Denmark, the book explores memory, belonging, loss, and the fragile relationship between human beings and the natural world. Its luminous prose and contemplative structure have made it a landmark of twentieth-century autobiographical writing, though its vision of Kenya also bears the complicated imprint of the colonial society in which Blixen lived. Both an intimate account of a vanished life and a meditation on the act of remembering, Out of Africa remains one of her most enduring works.

From the book

“If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back…”

— Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

On Out of Africa

“The outstanding quality of this book is charm.”

— The Spectator, 25 February 1938