Karen Blixen - Isak Dinesen home

Question 63b: Interior of the Ngong house?

A. The following photos show the adjacent bedrooms, the high beamed ceilings, and the fireplace that opens (here) in the foyer, an intimate space Karen Blixen used as a sitting room. She and Denys Finch Hatton talked beside this fireplace.

The door you see beside the record player enters her bedroom, and is to the left as you come inside the house. The bookcase (seen on the previous page) is to your right. Below one shelf of the bookcase is a brass plaque with the initials D.F.H. Denys paid for the bookcase to be built in 1930 when he shipped to Kenya a collection of books left to him by his mother. He died a year later, a few months before Karen Blixen left Africa.

A fireplace (seen in the previous page of photos) warmed the paneled great room Karen Blixen used as a dining room, the room that "looked west," according to Out of Africa. In the view of the great room below, her bedroom is through the door to the left. To the right you see light from the double doors that go out to the millstone tables.

Copyright © 2003 by Linda Donelson. All rights reserved. The photos may not be copied, reproduced or used elsewhere on the internet.

You can see photos of the exterior of the house at this link: Exterior. A variety of exterior photos can be found among our Travel Links.

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