I had not read the book when I watched the film, so rushed out to get a copy. Soon I fell in love with Blixen’s lyrical prose. How can you not love an author who writes: The Natives “were quick to understand that meaning in poetry is of no consequence, and they did not question the thesis of the verse, but waited eagerly for the rhyme, and laughed at it when it came … As they had become used to the idea of poetry, they begged: ‘Speak again. Speak like rain.’ Why they should feel verse to be like rain I do not know. It must have been, however, an expression of applause, since in Africa rain is always longed for and welcomed.” How much of the character of the Kenyans, and also of herself, she captures in that passage!

I find Out of Africa a beautiful book, written with such skill in English by a woman for whom English was not a first language, written with insight and sadness. It is an elegy for a way of life now gone, a statement of mourning for a landscape that entered her very soul and moved her deeply. Karen Blixen was never really ‘out’ of Africa again. This book is a testament to its power and her longings.