5 comments about African Nights: True Stories from the Author of I Dreamed of Africa.

1. I was quite offended by this white settler's life of endless parties, adventures, gourmet foods and travel around the world and throughout the stunning countryside of Kenya. Based on the colonial legacy of British, one of the many brutal European powers that profited from the domination of Africa, Gallmann was able to purchase 100,000 acres of land, stolen through the colonial system. All of Africa is in fact the birthright of the African people themselves. Gallmann's book is full of idealized and romanticized stories in which she is the central star. For a more realistic view of Kenya where nearly 60 percent of the people still live on less than $2 a day with a life expectancy of only 45 years, see, for example, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins. This is the story of the British slaughter of the Kikuyu people of Kenya in the 1950s who were put by the millions in concentration camps and murdered when they were rightfully struggling for the liberation of their homeland.



2. How she does it I don't know. She's incredible, seeing beauty in everything, painting vivid pictures for all to delight in. Presuming it to be only remnants from her perfect book I Dreamed of Africa, I doubted the caliber of this work. I was skeptical but willing - but Gallmann has proved that everything she touches illuminates in melodious detail. Whether it is the amplification of a salmon pink sky, silhouettes at dusk, a tree that appears imbued with knowledge, or a night sky saturated with the sounds that are Africa, Kuki's awareness and ensuing stories are exceptional - encroaching inspirational. There is something in every story that appeals to heart and soul. I almost wanted to frame each story separately as if it were a sapphire or quartz rarity, explicit, precious and real. I'm so impressed by her writing and the lighted manner in which she takes in Africa. It's wonderful.
   
   I liked this book.



3. My family and I visited Kenya last year and were utterly overwhelmed by the experience. Following that trip we read several books on Africa and amongst them was firstly "I dreamed of Africa" and latterly "African Nights". On a subsequent trip to Oman, I was reading the former book on the plane and had to stop, lest the flight attendants and fellow passengers witness me breaking down in tears. (Kuki's words at her son's funeral service). The spirit and the eloquence of her writing and indeed of her very experiences touched our hearts deeply. So much so that we traveled this year (August 2007) to Likepia, to her 'ranch' (now a conservation area), as a kind of pilgrimage to an Africa that has mostly vanished, swallowed up in commercialism, in over-grazing and exploitation. What did we find? An incredibly special place where conservation efforts harmonise with nature; where people are valued. Where students from all over the world come to research 'projects', encouraged by the owner of the land - Kuki. We met a variety of people, both African and otherwise. Pokot Tribespeople. Belgium guides. Eastern European Photographers. Kenyan Musicians. Village children at the custom built school... An eclectic mix of people with a common passion - for Africa, for its people and for its land. All inspired by one person. An author of two books.
   
   The grammar in Kuki's second book may, according to several reviews, not be immaculate or even American, but given the life that Kuki has led, and indeed continues to lead, I believe that people should simply get past such utterly insignificant details and try to feel the reality that the author describes.
   
   Kuki tells her story her way, and obviously leads her life her way. She has suffered loss and tragedy, but this is an author who has 'moved on', in control of her destiny and embracing change with a passion and an artistry that the vast majority of us could not hope to emulate.
   
   Perhaps her sentences may be deemed a bit long by some. But when she describes a vignette of her family, of Africa.... you are there with her: With her husband at the coast. With her son catching snakes by the lake... And in being there through her writing, you are actually the closest you'll likely come to a very special part of Africa. A part that isn't on the tourist trail. A part that is rapidly encroached by charcoal burning; by agriculture, by population explosion. But a part that is still home to both Elephant and to Lion and to a very special community.
   
   Put criticism of grammar or sentence structure behind you. These matters do not rate for much in the overall tapestry of life. And it is that tapestry that Kuki so artfully weaves, allowing you to enter her world, and become a part of her life by doing so.



4. When I finished this book, I felt I had learned something, or perhaps been reminded of something I already knew. What struck me was the author's capacity to love, to suffer, and ultimately to find strength and see the beauty in her experiences. I admire this woman's spirit and her unique spirituality. The connection that she finds with the land and the animals and the people that pass through her life make me think, "wow, that is a life well-lived and worth reading about."



5. I did volunteer work at Kuki's Ol Ari Nyrio in 11/07 and it was the most amazing experience of my life. I also had dinner with Kuki and she is an artist- attentive, creative, intelligent, and misses nothing. Africa is a place like no other-you cannot expect the norm - truth is always more interesting & stranger than fiction, remember. Kuki is an amazing person and the work she has done for the people & animals in the area, without spoiling the natural habitat or trying to change the people's ways, is well told. The death of her son and husband, so tragic, has led her to different levels in life, where so much work has been done for the good of generations to come. Read her books-they are wonderful!

5 comments about The Shadow of Kilimanjaro.

1. Rick Ridgeway has written a very informative and entertaining account of his 300 mile hike West to East across southern Kenya in 1997. The walk was metaphorically in THE SHADOW OF KILIMANJARO beginning on the summit of that great mountain and spanning the different ecological zones of mountain moraine, foothills, savannah, scrub, desert, and finally tropical white sand beaches of the Indian Ocean coast near Malindi. More significantly Ridgeway writes about his journey in the shadow of others who have written famously on Kenya, most significantly Hemingway, Dinesen, and Blixen. At yet another level this story is set in the shadow of Kenya's colonial history and its current struggles as a developing nation trying to make its way in the modern world.

   Ridgeway deals with all the relevant issues - ecology and the environment, conservation, domestic politics, the economy, tourism, the romantic literary images, the colonial legacy, the Mau Mau uprisings, cultural, ethnic, and social issues. And he deals with them in the way good travel writing should. Simply present the facts as you get them and let others speak their truths. No moralizing and very little contextualizing and therefore very refreshing.

   The image of Kenya that emerges is that of a real country. Not too much of the fantasy and gloss of a romantic wilderness nor the equally unreal vision of warring tribes at THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. Just reality. Strengths, weaknesses, beauty, blemishes, issues, agendas, and concerns. All the things that face a people making their way on a rapidly globalizing planet. Although Ridgeway's Kenya is a very different place than the country I knew in the 1960's when I lived there in my youth, it's still as rich and as alive as I remember it and Ridgeway has done an excellent job of bringing it home.




2. Combining moments of danger with moments of profound introspection, mountaineer/explorer Ridgeway details his journey from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro through the Tsavo game reserves to Mombasa, a month-long journey on foot, which allows him to experience man's primal relationships with the environment. Traveling with an experienced guide, two members of the Kenya Park and Wildlife Service, and two sharpshooters (in case of life-threatening danger), Ridgeway follows dry riverbeds across the savanna, seeking "tactile knowledge of Africa's wildlands and wild animals."
   
   Far more than a search for thrills, the journey offers Ridgeway an opportunity to observe breath-taking vistas and the full panoply of wildlife, from the elephant to the tiniest of birds, paying equal attention to all. Mourning the absence of once-plentiful animals from the bushlands near Kilimanjaro, and the decline of species elsewhere, Ridgeway contemplates the long-term effects of colonialism, big game hunting, poaching, traditional tribal values, climatic changes, and tourism, as well as man's seemingly innate tendency to kill certain species into extinction.
   
   Ridgeway, long a hunter himself, is an engaging author, both observant and thoughtful. A great admirer of hunter-turned-game-park-adminstrator Bill Woodley, whose two sons from the Park and Wildlife Service are on the journey, he provides a sensitive and impartial treatment of conservation issues. Extolling the work of elephant researchers Cynthia Moss and Joyce Poole, the latter of whom joins the group for part of the journey, he points out that they have acquired through study a kind of knowledge not available to hunters. Without preaching, he conveys "the big picture," making a compelling case for the fact that to preserve Africa's large mammals one must "fight fiercely not only to preserve, but even to expand, their wild habitat." Mary Whipple



3. I was so disappointed by this book I could not get through more than a couple of chapters. The author may know about mountaineering, but he seems to know very little about Kenya. Moreover, I found the writing to be ethnocentric and quite boring.



4. Author Ridgeway writes a well-paced narrative that smoothly ties together his personal adventure in eastern Africa with the area's history and culture, particularly in terms of its ecology, with focus on elephants as the defining megafauna of the area.
   
   Ridgeway provokes thought on the future of Africa's large animals, the past fate of those large mammals that have already disappeared, and how we humans tie into all of this. His primary sources are the people who have shaped and continue to shape Kenya's game and wildlife policies; these sources give his writing the distinct tinge of veracity.
   
   Recommended for any interested in travel, African history, or ecology.



5. Let me first of all say that Rick Ridgeway is one of my favorite adventure writers. This book is focused on the area around Kilimanjaro and the current state of the conservation movement. Rick does a wonderful job of describing the area as he makes his way on foot from Kilimanjaro to the East coast of Africa.
   
   One of my favorite aspects of this book is that Rick includes all the books he has used in his research to gain a better understanding of the history of East Africa.
   
   If you love a well written adventure, with enough meat to make you want to dig deeper in understanding Africa - this is your book.

5 comments about Kenya (Country Guide).

1. LOts of good information for my upcoming trip. Will take it with me to refer as I travel.



2. I used this book while living in Nairobi for 3 months. It was especially helpful for planning my excursions around the country. My Kenyan friends couldn't believe how helpful it was. They didn't even know where to get the kind of information the book provides. I wouldn't travel to Kenya without it!



3. This book was somewhat helpful when I recently spent two months in Kenya, but I found that some of the information was out of date (despite this being an updated edition) and there were many things that should have been mentioned that were not. Although it gives a great overview, for those who are going to be spending a substantial amount of time in Kenya, I would probably opt for the Rough Guide to Kenya, which was more thorough and much more accurate.



4. Although I am an experienced traveller, I always ensure that I bring along a copy of the Lonely Planet guide. Not only does it give me a flavour for the country I am to visit, but the guides are packed full of excellent tips from those who know the area. A Lonely Planet guide pays for itself - it is one of the essentials in my travel kit.



5. I am a HUGE fan of lonely planet - but after living in Kenya for 2 years I wasn't so impressed by their Kenya book. Not a lot of good info for a budget traveller. Hopefully the new edition is improved.

2 comments about The Rough Guide to Kenya 8 (Rough Guide Travel Guides).

1. Last April, together with my son I went on a 10 days' self-drive safari in a small Maruti jeep from Nairobi to South Nyanza in Western Kenya, exploring Kenya's western highlands, the Lake Victoria coast and islands, and also the Ruma National park, bringing the Rough Guide to Kenya 8 with us. We found the book very helpful. The guidebook probably has the best coverage of this area. The safari was great!



2. I recently spent two months in Kenya, and I read a lot of guide books both before I left the U.S. and once I was in Africa. This was definitely the most useful and informative....it was far superior to Lonely Planet in both coverage and accuracy. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is going to be spending a substantial amount of time in Kenya.

5 comments about The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics).

1. If you are interested in other cultures and ways of life, this book is a treasure. Yes, there has to be a bit of willing suspension of disbelief that this would be the way a child would see and describe things, but if you can live with the fact that this is an adult looking back on her childhood, it's a small thing to get over. The descriptions I found perfect--very vivid, yet not so extensive that they became boring and slowed down the story. And just in what happens and isn't even excused (her parents leave her with neighbors, she accompanies the neighbor's worker to the city, where he leaves her with some more strangers--we'd be calling the police, and her parents are just slightly inconvenienced! And everyone else there has just left their small children at boarding school, not seeing them for years!), the book gives a lot of food for thought about the realities of life in that time and place.



2. In 1913, a little English girl named Elspeth relocated with her family from their native country to begin a coffee plantation in the wilds of Kenya. Similar in a way to Laura Ingall Wilder's adventurous and sentimental "take" on what was surely a very difficult experience for her family, Elspeth remembers Kenya as a wonderful place and tells us with lingering excitement of her experiences there in the short time before the First World War changed nearly everything. A delightful memoir that is a pleasure every time it's read.



3. I loved this book. It is beautifully written and is a gripping story on growing up in Africa.



4. The Flame Trees of Thika is a wonderfully written book giving the reader a glimpse of what it must have been like to grow up in Colonial Africa. It is an experience most of us will only have through reading and can only be compared to what it must have been to be one of the early settlers on the American Frontier.



5. This is by now a revered classic of a young girl's childhood in the Kenyan countryside under British rule. One reads this and instantly identifies with the colonial family. It's a kind of Swiss Family Robinson story about that magical time in Kenya and thereabouts before World War I when the world seemed to be at the feet of the British King and all globes glowed pink under the Empire. Were people ever so free and happy as the colonialists in Africa who instantly had countless servants, nearly free land, and the British fleet for protection? This is Out of Africa for the middle class, as opposed to Isak Dinesen's aristocratic take on things. Still, the going was good, as Evelyn Waugh once said. Ms Huxley is a charming writer. Required reading for lovers of things African.

5 comments about Reunion in Barsaloi.

1. Hofmann's last book to date seems to be just a filler - hardly anything to say. She dragged the story of her revisiting - what she calls "her family" through endless repetitions and descriptions of facts not at all connected to the subject, like her alpine expedition to Tanzania, under the pretext that she longed for Africa. She goes on and on to even describe the people she met on this trip - totally irrelevant to the topic. She definitely squeezed her 2 - 3 years Kenyan adventure to the last drop. Or is it the last drop? I bet we will have a fourth volume, when she will return to Kenya with her daughter.
   Although I read her first two books with much interest, I would say that this interest was mainly due to her unimaginable folly and to finding out more about the Massai customs. How can one sensible 26-year old woman, from Switzerland - not some poor village in Albania, or Haiti, or Honduras, go willingly to live 3 years in a mud-hut, without washing for weeks, without medical assistance, without food, in a primitive environment where women are cruelly mutilated; cannot talk to their men; are married off as children and not allowed to see a doctor? Her husband did not provide for her, she had to spend her own money, work hard and in the end, she became their only source of sustenance. Mind you all this in the name of love! What love? She saw some exotic, handsome Massai on a boat and wow, he becomes the love of her life?! Never mind he could not speak English, he could not write, and moreover, was a lousy lover! If Hoffmann has some money left from the publishing of these books - I suggest she looks for a good therapist. Her adventure proved to be monetarily profitable, but still, she should find out what made her do it and understand her folly.



2. This is the sequel to The White Masai. Awesome books - couldn't put them down.



3. A great follw up to the two previous books - i really enjoyed this easy to read book.



4. I feel the same way! These books are a waste of time. I am a very open minded person and have a family who lived with the Masai people for 5 years. That's why I was interested in her books in the first place. But my family can truly appreciate what these people have gone through and lived with them for years and still visits.
   They received much more respect and attention from the Masai than she seemingly ever did. She just seems as though she is making a good living off of a lousy experience.
   Did she have to go through intense rituals to become a member of their society? No, she just slept with a member of their society? Did she even do any of her own chores to get water or wash clothing? Hardly, she hired a girl to do it for her!
   For those of you who know nothing about lust and travel, tourist can easily find a Masai man to sleep with and Masai men can easily find a tourist to help make a living for themselves. Its a give and take relationship that most people accept as just that. Sure some fall in love! This is mainly what her story was! Nothing more!
   I'm not sure about what Lketinga's feelings are from reading her side of the story, but I can tell you that alot of men from these tourist countries thrive off of finding a foreign woman with money to help them survive. That's how I saw her story.
   Not many Outsiders can truly become a member of the Masai society like my family member did. And he is of a race and culture, you'd least expect to live in a home made of cow dung!
   Also her ignorance affected not only that sweet man but her daughter. That man was living out his culture and his beliefs and didn't deserve her abandonment with his child.
   I don't mean any disrespect to their daughter by talking about her parents but, I just feel her mother doesn't deserve the rights to profit from this tale. I personally know other people who actually deserve more reputable respects than she does for living with and understanding Masai people and they don't receive any movies or acknowledgments like she does. They just continue to live their lives and look back on their past experiences with joy.
   Basically, her experiences were nothing to write a book over or to make a sequel to. I suppose if you know nothing about lust and tourism, or Masai culture you could easily find this book amusing. But a romantic tale, it is not!!!!!



5. This book can stand on its own but ideally you should read "The White Masai" and "Back From Africa" first. You will not regret traveling with Corinne Hofmann on any of her journeys. She has had an amazing, colorful life....and I'm sure there's more she'll share with us. I do hope she'll write at least one more as she does have unfinished business in Africa and I'm looking forward to hearing about its resolution.

1 comments about Natural Fashion: Tribal Decoration from Africa.

1. The sub title, "Decoration from Africa" is literally correct but substantially misleading. This is a book of sumptuous photographs of young and beautiful inhabitants of Ethiopia's Omo valley. There are essentially no pictures of day to day life or the true context of these people's lives. This book is not about daily life, nor does it pretend to be, but by describing its content as tribal decoration from Africa it promises something authentic. However, nearly everyone here is decked out in face and body paint and draped in a salad bar of lush leaves, sensual pods and pretty flowers. Are they decorating themselves out of some tribal tradition, or for the benefit of the potographer? Travel to southern Ethiopia has become very much easier in recent years. Small groups of intrepid tourists now visit the Omo frequently where as 20 years ago such visits were rare and arduous. Published images from the 80s will show villagers less flamboyantly made up. What appears to be happening is that a fashion show for foreigners is under way, much as what happened in the Nuba Hills of Sudan after Leni Reifenstahl published her famous photo essay hald a century ago. A more accurate title for this book would have been New Fashions: Tribal Children Decorate Themselves for Hans Silvester.

5 comments about Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass.

1. I'm another reader who comes to Out of Africa by way of Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye; and it became recommended reading before I visited Kenya for myself in the early 90's. So, having just finished it and now half way through Shadows on the Grass, my overall impression is a pleasant one. I enjoyed Dinesen's writing style very much, and would agree with many readers that Out of Africa deserves a place among the classics in English literature. It's Karen Blixen's memoirs of her time in Kenya around WWI, living and working on her coffee plantation near Nairobi. Her descriptions of the Natives, her European friends, the land, the animals, flora and fauna are incredible. The chapters shift back and forth in time, some focused on specific events and individuals, some more whimsical and anecdotal. Reading Out of Africa transports the reader into early 20th Centrury colonial Kenya, and more concretely, onto Ms. Blixen's farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills. Years later she takes up her time in Africa again in Shadows on the Grass, talking more about her loyal Somali servant & right-hand man, Farah, taking a more philosophical tone regarding "masters & slaves", Native superstitions, manners, and so on. Shadows is inferior in many ways to Out of Africa, and it feels more like an "addendum" to the main work, which is poetry by comparison. By the time she writes it, she seems to have grown slightly more distant, and well, Colonist European.
   
   As for Out of Africa, if you've seen the movie version and are looking for it here you're in for a surprise because the book contains no overt romance between Karen & Denys, nor mention of siphylous, nor much in the way of Karen's own personal life. Her ex-husband, Bror is almost non-existant. That makes sense seeing that she wrote under a pseudonym for whatever reaons. Still, I was slightly disappointed not to find more personal thoughts or emotions from her, or discussions regarding the politcal, historical, or economic backdrop of Kenya. Or the workings of the coffee business there. (I have yet to read it, but from what I gather "Uhuru" by Robert Ruark is an excellent novel dealing with these types of affairs in Kenya in the next generations after Blixen, in the 1950's & 1960's). Also, Blixen is very much a product of the times and her colonial attitudes and mindset sometimes come across as condescending or negative towards the Africans (mostly in certain passages in Shadows though). However, I do believe that in her frequent comparisons between the animals, land, and Natives Blixen is actually praising and admiring the people, not being racist or mean, as one reviewer here claims. She frequently praises the Kikuyus, Masai, and Somali she lives with for their numerous attributes (as well as the European settlers) and for their simplicity and harmony with nature, versus the repressed and "civilized" Europe she comes from. One other thing that's different from the movie is her attitude towards hunting. In the movie it's as though she doesn't hunt at all, but in the book she specifically mentions her intitial desire to shoot one of every kind of local game (though she does later express some distaste for hunting, she remains enthusiastic about shooting lions, comparing it in Shadows to "a declaration of love" and hunting to being a sort of "love-affair"). She means respect, but oh how the times have changed now with all the big game enthusiasts shooting game with . . . cameras from pop-top mini-vans!
   
   Once I let go of the movie (its own masterpiece of beauty & cinematography) and my intellectual curiosities, and came to accept Blixen's memoir as it is, I enjoyed it more and more as I read on. I took my time reading it, savoring it, and reflecting upon my own safari experience (with a camera) in Kenya not too many years ago, and found much to admire and contemplate in her writings, even if from a different era. While Out of Africa isn't especially deep or philosphical, nor dramatic or emotional, it somehow comes across as a grand novel, and there are moments when all of the above hit you. This is due primarily, I think, to Blixen's having lived a fascinating life in a unique period and place, and knowing how to tell a story without overdoing it - she just writes her own experiences. One good example of this balance can be found in one of my favorite chapters entitled, "A Fugitive Rests on the Farm" from Part III. In it, a Swedish immigrant and traveler named Emmanuelson stays briefly on Karen's farm, discusses his lonely and peripatetic life with her, and eventually walks off into the Masai reserve all alone, putting his fate into God & the Masai's hands. The sparse detail and images are great. Likewise, her rememberances with Denys Fitch-Hatton are wonderfuly scenic and memorable as well, and subtly romantic. All the vignettes she relates are mostly undramatic, straight-forward, and though unforgettable. Out of Africa is a unique literary memoir and journal of a diverse group of people come together in one specific place and time, bonded together by the very soil in which the coffee trees they lived for were once planted, and live on in these organic pages.



2. Underlying Blixen's tale of early 20th century Africa is the presumption that there was such a place; that is, a people or nation of peoples existed to which she went and from which she was forced to depart by economic circumstances. This presumption a priori allows her to reminisce about Africa the way it was or was supposed by her to have been.
   
   As she observed, Africa was, in a sense, leaving her. Peoples were being moved around, new laws restricting tribal behavior were being passed, and the Ngong Hills were being laid out as a suburb of Nairobi. She was there, she professed, before all these changes began.
   
   But was she? Was there a time and place, "Africa", or is this concept mainly her and the European view of the times? Blixen's Africa in fact was not any sort of original. Europeans had already produced vast changes: the tribes were by then being herded into reservations and European ways and goods prevailed. European reporters never reported Africa the way it was or had been. That information remained "dark."
   
   The informational darkness is not entirely their fault. An observer always alters that which he sets out to observe. It is only a presumption that his observations are an approximation of the reality the way it would be without him observing it. That presumption is least justifiable in human affairs. We will never know what the original Masai or Kikuyu were like, or the exact configuration of flora and fauna among which they dwelled, or how they reacted to their environments or each other.
   
   Similarly Blixen's little white light doesn't shine very far. We get some ethnic generalities as the vehicle of which she devises some stock identities, "the Kikuyu", "the Masai" and the like, which, on closer examination, turn out to be of European origin. Blixen manufactures masks and tries to get the Africans to wear them. Sociological and anthropological data are nearly entirely in deficit from these supposed traits. She probably is not alone in this process of inventing peoples. It accounts, perhaps, for why the Mau-mau insurrection caught the Europeans totally by surprise, as though you were to paint doodles on a sleeping man's body and he were to awake suddenly and demand angrily to know what you were doing.



3. I find most autobiographies to be masterbatory exercises in which the authors attempt to explain themselves.
   
   But in Out of Africa, Denison does no explaining, no apologizing. It is love poem to the Africa she knew, and while she does display racist views, it is as she unashamedly shows her heartbreak over a world she loved and was lost.
   
   Denison also wrote some very powerful short stories, most notably the ones in "Winter's Tales." "The Sorrow Acre," is technically one of the most masterly presented short stories I have ever read. Despite her later skills, though, Out of Africa sets itself apart as a masterpiece for its ability to elegantly show an individual's gushing sense of loss.



4. Now eclipsed by the Streep-Redford film presentation that appropriated its title, Karen Blixen's memoir of life on her Kenyan coffee farm speaks movingly of the more benign side of colonialism in Africa and of one European's self-evident love for the land she had made her own.
   
   Sadly, Blixen's lush descriptions of 'her people' are often judged too quickly by modern criteria of racial attitudes, a game that is like asking this early twentieth-century writer to wrestle with one arm tied behind her back. If it can be granted that there was anything good about Europe's colonization of Africa, then Bliksen (Isak Dinesen was her pen name) is its face.
   
   She loved the land and its people, entering about as far as was plausible in her time into the remarkable rhythm of both. What more can be asked of any of us, all children of our moment and enveloped in its limitations?
   
   This is a book for lovers of Africa, no matter whence they come. Blixen not only pushed an eloquent pen, she was herself shaped in the biblical and classical language of educated Europeans in a way that prepared her to bridge Africa and Europe in a day when few were equipped to do so.
   
   Blixen's Africa no longer exists, as she already realized within the window of her writing of OUT OF AFRICA and SHADOWS ON THE GRASS. Yet the Africa Blixen knew has children, not to be disinherited for the generations that have passed and the unsavory disease that a legacy of failed leaders has wrought upon this great continent. Though the primary fruit of reaching behind the celluloid to *read* OUT OF AFRICA is the satisfaction of the read itself, it is also true that today's Africa and today's Africans can be glimpsed in the great-grandparents who knew and lived in proximity to this enigmatic and uniquely gifted Danish colonist in a land she mistreated only by calling it hers.



5. I came to this book expecting to read one woman's personal experience of living in Africa, and that's what I found. There is no sociology here, and very little historical context. She does not illuminate THE African experience. She records HER African experience. Certainly that is all she owes the reader? One woman's experience, one woman's life in a time very different from our own.
   
   Do some of her observations shock the modern reader's sensibility? Oh certainly. There are things one simply does not SAY, and back when she wrote, she did. On the whole, her love and respect shine through when speaking of the people who entered her life as neighbors, employees and friends.
   
   Dinesen brings to life a physical landscape that most of us will never get to see. She takes passionate delight in her work, her companions, and her surroundings. Even her setbacks are embraced, as they compose part of a life she knew was slipping away from her.
   
   I was intrigued by what she didn't write. The book maintains almost complete silence about her husband, her health, and her relationship with Denys Finch Hatten. It is only in writing of his death that we understand how deep her feelings were. She writes around that love. Her discretion made my heart ache.
   
   Very highly recommended.

5 comments about Out of Africa (Modern Library).

1. It's tough to bungle a memoir set in Africa - early 20th-century, a hilltop coffee plantation, with lions, hyenas, giraffes, zebras and views of Kilamanjaro - and Karen Blixen largely avoids it. Surrounded by offbeat adventurers and Kikuyu retainers, the author has innumberable sources of interest to draw from.
   
   I saw the movie when it premiered in 1985 and, maybe because of my youth, found it to be quite a sleeper. Some twenty years later, I find the book, as is often the case, to be significantly better. But, this doesn't disguise the fact that Blixen's written work can be somewhat disjointed. She skips hither and yon and too often casts aside a recollection before it's much anticipated completion. Kamante, a cherished and endearing Kikuyu child, a seemingly essential component, disappears without trace though ostensibly remaining within the author's immediate employ. One is left disappointedly pondering where this disarming youngster has gone.
   
   All things considered, however, the period and place overpower any literary shortcomings. Blixen's scattershot approach still manages to bestow a palpable sense of wonder. It feeds the pull a person feels for the savannah, the safari, the elemental mystique which is the continent of Africa. I recommend it. 4+ stars.



2. The book, "Out of Africa," is a memoir of the Danish Baroness Karen Blixen's habitation near Nairobi in Kenya from 1914 to 1931 on a fertile 6000-acre coffee plantation, "at the foot of the Ngong Hills" (1992: 3). Blixen writes under the pen-name Isak Dinesen. Karen Blixen went to British East Africa (in a location in present-day, Kenya) to join her German husband (Baron Bror Blixen), and upon separation she stayed in Kenya to manage the farm by herself. The extent of her adventures in Africa, and to what extent she is a feminist is borne out by the book, as well as the film "Out of Africa," that is based on the book. This piece will examine such, as well as comparisons between the book and the film.
   
   Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) presents geographical detail, oftentimes comparisons and contrasts within this fertile land of the Kikuyu people that would several decades later be the crux of the Mau-Mau rebellion over whites' displacement and dispossession of natives from their land. Dinesen also compares features with those of her native Europe. Dinesen writes of the equatorial habitat, "Everything that you saw made for greatness and freedom, and unequaled nobility...Up in this high air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart: Here I am where I ought to be" (1992: 4). Dinesen writes of "heavy-scented lilies," of "long-rains," "ever-changing clouds," of "hills from the farm [that} changed their character many times in the course of the day, and sometimes looked quite close and at times very far away" (1992: 4). Dinesen, in precise and elegant language displays love and fascination for the geography, the clean air, the animals, the beauty of this African environment; she becomes possessed by the place.The movie captures the large, picturesque, mysterious, and varied eastern equatorial Africa where the eland, the buffalo, and the rhino are quite common sights; the movie impressively and unanimously earned, Oscar, "Best Picture of the Year."
   
   In the end Dinesen is forced to give up her plantation, this scenario elicits a heartache and sadness. Dinesen's memoirs, years after she had left Africa could be a reflection of her nostalgic dealing with her loss of the farm as well as overall experiences in Africa. Dinesen stands out as a courageous and strong woman, one who is in the feminist direction. She lost her philandering husband, but stayed on bravely, for nearly 20 years in a foreign harsh environment, one with languages and cultures far-fetched from her own. Dinesen worked well at being appreciative of an environment that was new to her, during an era of colonialism in Africa, a time when Darwinian relegation of black Africans to the lowest of human species and elevation of whites to the upper rung was very strong. Dinesen cuts through the female traditional roles, she tries flying in planes, the goes on safari, she learns how to shoot and even shoots and kills game. She is open and welcomes countless visitors from all over the world to her home and farm. This was an age of exploration and acquisition of "Dark Africa," by Europeans and Asians. Dinesen is quite aware of her feminine strength. She rescues and adopts a wounded antelope she names Lulu; Lulu becomes a celebrity on the farm; Dinesen searches, discovers and celebrates the feminist strength in Lulu: "But Lulu was not really gentle, she had the so-called devil in her. She had, to the highest degree, the feminine trait of appearing to be exclusively on the defensive, concentrating on guarding the integrity of her being, when she was really, with the force in her, bent upon and defensive" (1992: 74). Also, "Lulu of the woods was a superior, independent being...she was in possession. If I had happened to have known a young princess in exile, and while she was still a pretender to the throne, and had met her again in her full queenly estate after she had come into her rights, our meeting would have had the same character" (1992: 78).
   
   The book displays that Karen Blixen exemplified the Europeans with the upper hand in colonial world conquest and politics. It is to be recalled that the three weapons used by Europeans to subjugate Africans were the gun, the Bible, and the anthropologist. Karen used guns to protect herself. Catholic (mostly Belgian and French), Protestant (mostly British), and Muslim (mostly Arabic) agencies vied for power in Africa. The Germans were in present-day neighboring Tanzania (German East Africa) to the south. They would be ousted during this significant, "Scramble for Africa." The book illustrates how Karen Blixen took great interest in which religious group the young natives (some of whom served her) adhered to. Many native followers, taught to kneel and pray to an invisible white Almighty god, became converted to the political/ religious groups, as they became dispossessed of their land resources. The anthropology aspect, as mentioned, involved relegation of black Africans to the lowest rungs of evolutionary mankind...the white was relegated as the superior, the master, the savior, the benevolent, the genius. The movie is great at casting Meryl Streep as the beautiful, rosy-cheeked clean, statuesque woman amidst muddy, black African paradise! The real Karen Blixen likely had more rugged looks and likely often got "down-and-dirty," than is depicted in the movie. An equatorial Africa of long and heavy rainy seasons, of continuous tropical sun, and of limited running water would not leave the Danish heroine so clean and collected.
   
   It is to be recalled that Dinesen is writing from an overly European point of view, hence, negative criticism of her will not be short. Her attitude to black Africans is racist and condescending. In the movie, Denys Finch-Hatton (Robert Redford) rebukes her for instructing native porters to get off her belongings by "shooing," them off!. Finch-Hatton, in shock, remarks to her, "Shoo?" as if telling her, "I do not believe you addressed these people that way!" Finch-Hatton (who became Dinesen's lover) knows the native languages (Kiswahili and Kikuyu), and goes on to communicate her instructions to the porters. Black Africans are prevalently depicted in the movie as poverty-stricken servants, laborers and porters, as helpless people close to animal nature. In tune with the movie, here Dinesen writes, "They were poor people, small and underfed; they looked like a pair of badgers on my lawn...I could hardly distinguish them against the grass. They were sank in deep grief; their bereavement and their economic loss melted into one overwhelming distress" (1992: 108). Dinesen is surprised that the, "Natives," are strikingly open, adapting, welcoming and unprejudiced. Yet, as prevalent in the colonial fashion, she does not attribute this to the inner traditions and workings of indigenous African society, but from influence from foreigners including slavers! "The lack of prejudice in the Natives is a striking thing, for you expect to find dark taboos in the primitive people. It is due...to their acquaintance with a variety of races and tribes, and to the lively human intercourse that was brought upon East Africa, first by the old traders of ivory and slaves...and...by the settlers and big-game hunters" (1992: 54).
   
   Dinesen wishes the natives would understand and appreciate her more. It is always presumptuous to be confident of having fully understood a foreign culture and people; she does not seem to believe she is prejudiced and why the natives to a good extent regard her as a foreigner far different from them, and difficult to comprehend. She writes, "If I know a song of Africa,---I thought,---of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the field, and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me?" (1992: 83). At the same time, Dinesen quite often acknowledges that newcomers from Africa are from a noisy and rushed world, they do not have the patience and connectedness of native Africans. European colonialists imposed on the natives an alien system of forced dispossession and displacement and of monopoly. So much of this colonial intrusion was quite new to the prevalently communalist and family-oriented, egalitarian way of native African subsistence.
   
   Karen Blixen's marriage starts out as more of a convenience than of romance. She left Denmark to marry the German Baron Bror Blixen (Klaus Maria Brandauer) and start a dairy in Kenya. Bror is actually the brother of her lover. Karen is offering her fortune for companionship and adventure (and for the title of, "Baroness") much more than for enjoying the security of a man. So, from the outset, Karen's feminist inclinations are strong. The husband changes his mind about the diary, and instead invests her money in a risky venture of growing coffee. The husband is unfaithful, philandering, gives her syphilis that will disable her from having children; the marriage breaks up. Karen is left to manage the farm, she has to battle with floods and fire. Hardly anything of British big game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton's romance with Dinesen (Karen Blixen), is mentioned in the book; the movie likely borrows from other sources depicting the life of Karen Blixen. Unfortunately the English accent of Denys Finch-Hatton is not conveyed by Redford, compared to Karen's excellent outflow of a Scandinavian accent. Yet, the movie depicts their chemistry, Denys is impressed by her strength and independence, Karen's ability to tell and weave stories, they kiss, and in one scene have sex. Karen does seem to desire long-term companionship and commitment from Denys, desire for a man who will sacrifice to be with her. She stands against having a man like Denys who wants to be "free-wheeling," one who will come and go depending on need and desire, he loves the African outdoors. Finch-Hatton is mysterious, elusive and emotionally distant, but he is miscast in that in the movie: he seems to represent an all-American jock that waywardly found his way into Africa. Karen was wounded before, and this encounter with Denys is only a brief moment of ecstasy, but she bravely soldiers on, appreciating more of what is around her. Karen is indeed confident, stoic and creative in face of the odds. She did resist going on safari with Denys, but she eventually succumbed to his quite undeniable invitation. Eventually, they got closer, she broadened her horizons, she better adapted to and better accepted foreigners and their ways.
   
   In conclusion, the movie emphasizes the romantic issues and episodes in Karen Blixen's life in Africa (romance and sex sells in Hollywood), much more than the book does. The book seems to be constructed from a breadth of notes of what Blixen put together while in Africa, and weaved them into a good fairy tale. The truth is that Blixen dealt with aspects like fluctuating coffee prices, sometimes drought and heavy rains, discontented dispossessed natives, scrambles for Africa amongst several European agencies, African diseases and sometimes unsanitary conditions, wildlife from untamed neighborhoods. The movie does display the exquisite beauty of tropical Africa which Blixen did dwell on, but not on the colonial wranglings. There is lyrical beauty in Blixen's writing, and the movie does elicit an African peaceful mood through the excellent music. Blixen, in both the movie and the book is a strong and opinionated woman, yet flexible and open to ideas, people, and adventure. She is a significant precursor of modern-day feminism.



3. This was the first of many books I've read about Africa. At the time, I had a romanticized view of The Dark Continent, a naieve view.
   After doing some more research, I realize Karen Blixen's view was VERY romanticized....to the extent that many of her contemporaries thought her somewhat odd and out of touch with reality.
   If you want a lyrically told story colored with emotion...this is for you.
   If you're interested in Africa as it really was, read the many accounts extant by settlers who spent far more time, and ranged over a wider area.



4. The two-cassette abridgment was way too limiting for such a magnificent book. Also disappointing was the fact that the product was a rejected one from a public library, and the second tape was stretched and half of the second tape was not able to be heard. This product should never have been sold in this condition.



5. Out of Africa is Karen Blixen's memoir about her years in Africa, writing as Isak Dinesen. She recounts the world of Africa, specifically Kenya. It is, like the England of her friend Denys Finch-Hatton, "a world that no longer existed" even then and certainly as she left it. The memoir is a slow read, yet a book with prose in which you can luxuriate, or languish perhaps as it seems to mirror the mammoth African landscape. Reading like a pastoral novel, the narrator interested me with her myriad experiences. It presents people, cultures, landscape, and wildlife through her eyes, sometimes noble, sometimes paternal. The culture of the various tribes and religions with whom she had contact on her coffee farm became almost real, so that as I read certain moments became funny or sad or wistful. The reader comes to view animals differently, the fecundity of life struck me particularly. The different forces at work are both natural and foreign; the paradoxical nature of the presence of two churches (Roman Catholic and Church of Scotland) is sometimes presented as working for good yet other times it is in conflict. Blixen's memoir is truly literate and the importance of books and writing is evident throughout. Early in the memoir she tries to explain her wirting a book to a native. Near the end of her stay as she is selling off the furniture and other estate provisions their is a poignant moment when, as she sits on her remaining books, she comments:
   "Books in a colony play a different part in your existence from what they do in Europe; there is a whole side of your life which they alone take charge of ... you feel more grateful to them, or more indignant with them, than you will ever do in civilized countries." (p.373)
   Blixen's memoir of this "uncivilised" land is both memorable and effective in sweeping the reader away into a very different world. Definitely a worthwhile read.

5 comments about Bill Bryson's African Diary.

1. This is a book, not a pamphlet. You can tell by the price. Apparently, writing a check to CARE is too complicated, so they created this 64 page pam--book, cut Amazon in for some, a publisher in for some, and send maybe a quarter to CARE.
   
   Still, the early pages of the pambophoklet contain jokes and asides, and the later pages contain more, and there are color pictures, which surely means it's a book, not a pamphlet.
   
   If you like CARE, and you're not sure what their mailing address is, can't use Google, or don't have a checkbook anyway, this is the book for you. Fortunately, unlike many books in this price range, this one is very easy to finish, and it's more entertaining than most pamphlets on Africa, which tend to be longer to boot.



2. As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time in the country of Kenya, I enjoyed reading Bryson's thoughts and comments about the sites and sounds of East Africa, many of which I have observed myself. I just would have like to have heard more. Great read for someone who has been there because the allusions and humor definitely hit home.



3. this book was short, but what can you expect when he only spends a week there? he brings the reality of africa and kenya and all of the proceeds go to CARE.



4. Loved the book, which is written with Bryson's characteristic humor. With a very detailed account of his short trip to Kenya, I could see what Bryson was seeing and feel what he was feeling all along the way. I would highly recommend the book for giving an eye-opening glimpse into the lives of people in Kenya. The proceeds from the book's sale go to CARE.



5. This book may disappoint you a bit if you are used to Bryson's other books. It contains the characteristic marks of Bryson's books, but it isn't as well done as the others. Something is missing. Maybe the brief format or more serious subject matter tempered things a bit? I don't know. Oh well, this book was done for a good cause. And I applaud that effort.