Out of Africa, 1985

"If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me?

Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?"

Robert Redford and Meryl Streep Shampoo Scene in "Out of Africa"

"Out of Africa" is Isak Dinesen's memoir of her years in Africa, from 1914-1931, on a four-thousand-acre coffee plantation in the hills near Nairobi.

She had come to Kenya from Denmark with her husband, and when they separated she stayed on to manage the farm by herself, visited frequently by her lover, the big-game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, for whom she would make up stories "like Scheherazade".

Karen Blixen - Author of "Out of Africa"

In Africa, "I learned how to tell tales", she recalled many years later.

"The natives have an ear still. I told stories constantly to them, all kinds".

Her account of her African adventures, written after she had lost her beloved farm and returned to Denmark, is that of a master storyteller, a woman whom John Updike called "one of the most picturesque and flamboyant literary personalities of the century".

Robert Redford and Meryl Streep in "Out of Africa"

Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (1885-1962) was a Danish author who wrote works in Danish and English.

Karen Blixen - Author of "Out of Africa"

She is also known under her pen names Isak Dinesen, used in English-speaking countries, Tania Blixen, used in German-speaking countries, Osceola and Pierre Andrézel.

Blixen is best known for "Out of Africa", an account of her life while living in Kenya, and for one of her stories, Babette's Feast, both of which have been adapted into Academy Award–winning motion pictures.

The home where Blixen once lived is now the Karen Blixen Museum

She is also noted, particularly in Denmark, for her Seven Gothic Tales.

Among her later stories are Winter’s Tales (1942), Last Tales (1957), Anecdotes of Destiny (1958) and Ehrengard (1963).

Blixen was considered several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, though wasn't awarded because judges were reportedly concerned about showing favoritism to Scandinavian writers, according to Danish reports.

Robert Redford and Meryl Streep in "Out of Africa"

Ngong Hills | Karen Blixen Museum