Isak Dinesen: Gothic Storyteller

As a girl growing up on the family estate in Denmark, Karen Dinesen loved listening to the stories her father recounted about his travels. After his sudden death, Karen became convinced she was to carry on her father's storytelling tradition. She married Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke in 1914, and then moved with him to Africa to run a struggling coffee plantation. The challenge and thrill of living in a new land brought out strengths in Dinesen that enabled her to survive divorce, death of loved ones, bankruptcy, and her own prolonged illness. After returning to Denmark in 1931, she began writing down the stories she had once told to friends in Africa. She published the stories under the name Isak Dinesen and, within five years of departing Africa, she had become one of the world's most successful writers. Twice nominated for the Nobel Prize, her work has been adapted into awardwinning movies and continues to delight readers today.

Kathleen Karr - Children's Literature

Born Karen Dinesen, known to the world by her pen name of Isak (intentionally Biblical), Dinesen almost won the Nobel Prize for Literature twice—but is best remembered today for her Out of Africa. Leslie recounts Dinesen's life readably and well: her childhood on the family estate near Copenhagen; her ill-considered marriage to the twin brother of the man she desires; her adventures running the coffee plantation in East Africa (Kenya) which husband Bror ignores for conquests which afflict Dinesen with her lifelong cross of syphilis. And more. Hers was a chillingly star-crossed existence which was surmounted only by her writing. The writing is engrossing. Her stories are steeped in the 19th century romantic tradition overlaid with cool Scandinavian religious fatalism. Out of Africa, the partially fictionalized memoir of her years on the hot plains she loved, is filled with poetically described digressions on big game hunting and her relationship with the natives she championed. It was written in pain—after the collapse of the African experiment—from the distance of Denmark, and is still fascinating. Are kids likely to read Dinesen today? Probably only if presented with the woman first. This book has plenty of before and after photographs (the lovely pre-wedding Karen; the dashing huntress Karen; the skeletal survivor.) It also includes a timeline, index, and sources. Do present the woman, and order in a few extra copies of Out of Africa, too. Isak Dinesen was one of a kind. 2004, Morgan/Reynolds, Ages 12 up.