She continued her studies in Oxford, Paris, and Rome and began to write short fiction and novels.

Her love of painting prompted her to study art at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where she developed an eye for landscape details-a talent that would be reflected later in her writing. And one knows that her wish for life as a whole has been fulfilled by Africa: she did not let it go until it blessed her.' Author Biographyĭinesen was born Christentze Dinesen on April 17, 1885, in Rungsted, Denmark. Woods concludes that Dinesen 'tells the story with quiet and noble beauty.

Yet, Out of Africa is not just an account of what the author found in Africa it is also the story of how an independent and courageous woman came to understand and define herself. In her article in the New York Times Book Review, Katherine Woods maintains, 'Africa lives through all this beautiful and heart-stirring book because of that simple and unsought-for fusion of the spirit, lying behind the skill which can put the sense of Africa's being into clear, right, simple words, through the things and people of the farm.' Out of Africa comprises a series of Dinesen's observations of the African landscape and the character sketches of the East Africans and transplanted Europeans she met there. The award-winning 1985 film version, which won an Oscar for best picture, prompted a resurgence of interest in the book and helped place it on the best-seller list several years after her death. Published in 1937, the book garnered critical and popular acclaim, especially in Britain and the United States. Isak Dinesen's autobiographical novel, Out of Africa, recounts the years she spent on a coffee plantation in East Africa.

Out of Africa by Karen Blixen