Karen Blixen - Isak Dinesen home

Available through 2009 in hardcover:

6x 9; 440pp.
16-page b&w photo insert
0-9643893-9-8
$35.00 Hardcover/$19.95 Softcover
August 1998

Book Description:

This book is for readers who want to know the true story behind Isak Dinesen's tale, Out of Africa.

The Danish writer, twice nominated for the Nobel Prize, artfully related her efforts to run a coffee farm in East Africa between 1914 and 1931. She described her love for Africans and for farming and the tragic loss of her farm in the Great Depression. Her story is notable for its lyrical description of Africa and the larger than life friends she made there.

Isak Dinesen's book was a memoir; that is, she related the story in part and gave it certain flourishes that were only approximately true. The Hollywood film "Out of Africa" was loosely based upon her rendition and four other books by or about Isak Dinesen, whose real name was Karen Blixen.

Out of Isak Dinesen is the first to show by detailed analysis the development of Karen Blixen's/Isak Dinesen's relationship with the legendary hunter Denys Finch Hatton. The friendship, which lasted thirteen years, was strongly influenced by the presence or absence of another Kenya settler, Berkeley Cole. Karen Blixen twice believed she was pregnant with Finch Hatton's child

She was married for a time to a lovable rogue, her cousin, Baron Bror Blixen, who gave her syphilis in their first year of marriage. Physically, he was the love of her life, while Finch Hatton became her romantic ideal.

Karen Blixen's medical history has been widely misunderstood. She suffered only briefly from syphilis, and many of her later medical problems are attributable to the arsenic she took for years as a tonic. She also suffered from panic attacks, vividly described in Out of Africa, and a life long fear of living alone.

Until now, Karen Blixen's fictional works have not been well understood because her life and character remained an enigma. This book, told from Karen Blixen's point of view, focuses upon the events that inspired her early writing.


From the Publisher:

Out of Isak Dinesen was written by the author for her mother-in-law in Ames, Iowa, who wanted to know more about Karen Blixen but wasn't interested in the pre-existing literature about Karen Blixen, designed for an academic audience.

The book is not written  as a standard literary biography. The author quotes no secondary sources and avoids offering opinions about Karen Blixen from those who didn't know her. The author shows, rather than tells, what Karen Blixen was like, and the story unfolds with subtlety.

Linda Donelson's book has been praised by a wide audience of enthusiasts.  It is a Reading Group Choice, and it is the favorite book about Karen Blixen recommended by safari outfitters to their clients traveling to Kenya. It has been used by professors of Danish literature at the University of Minnesota and the University of Washington. Anne Born, translator of Karen Blixen's Letters from Africa, calls it "the most important book about the Danish author in many years."

Much sensational and unscientific commentary has been published about Karen Blixen. Linda Donelson's accurate and well-researched  account narrates a wonderful story. Out of Isak Dinesen is now in its fourth printing.


Linda Donelson is a physician who once lived on a farm in Kenya overlooking Karen Blixen's land. She now lives in Iowa City. Her book is recipient of the Writer's Digest Grand Prize and the Paul Cowan Award for Nonfiction.

From the Kenya Rough Guide,Sixth Edition: "Donelson's book is a diligently researched and thoughtfully written account of Karen Blixen's years in Kenya that brings a complex personality to life."

The list of recommended reading of Abercrombie & Kent, American safari outfitter, contains one book about Isak Dinesen: "Donelson's well researched biography offers a candid portrait of Karen Blixen and her complex relationships. The author spent years living in the Ngong Hills of Kenya, where Blixen farmed from 1914 to 1931. The book recreates the physical, social and political atmosphere of colonial Africa in fascinating detail."

Contemporary Authors, Volume 174, says Donelson's "realistic treatment" of  Dinesen's life counterbalances accounts of her life "romanticized both by her own and others' writings, as well as films that portray her as an intriguing, gothic figure."

Note: If your library does not yet have this title, ask your librarian to order it.