“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had go high up, near the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.” – from Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen
Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen (various editions)
“The geographical position, and the height of the land combined to create a landscape that had not its like in all the world.” – from Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen
Isak's Dinesen's Out of Africa transports readers to Kenya’s central highlands. It was there that she “had a farm…at the foot of the Ngong Hills,” between 1913 and 1932. Written after returning to Denmark, Out of Africa shares time and place, offering at once an often troubling look backward at colonialism and passages of unsurpassed beauty describing the landscape she came to love.
“To Denys Finch-Hatton I owe what was, I think, the greatest, the most transporting pleasure of my life on the farm: I flew with him over Africa. There, where there are few or no roads and where you can land on the plains, flying becomes a thing of real and vital importance, it opens up a world.” – from Out of Africa, by Isak Dinsesen
Related Websites
The Karen Blixen Museum, Rungstedlund, Denmark and The Karen Blixen Museum in Nairobi, Kenya
“I have before seen other countries, in the same manner, give themselves to you when you are about to leave them, but I had forgotten what it meant. I only thought that I had never seen the country so lovely, as if the contemplation of it would in itself be enough to make you happy all your life.” – from Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen