Kirjahaku

In 1914 Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya with her husband to run a coffee farm. Instantly drawn to the land, she spent her happiest years there until the plantation failed. Karen Blixen was forced to return to Denmark in 1931 and it was there that she wrote this classic account of her experiences. A poignant farewell to her beloved farm, Out of Africa describes her strong friendships with the people of her area, her affection for the landscape and animals, and great love for the adventurer Denys Finch-Hatton.Written with astonishing clarity and an unsentimental intelligence, Out of Africa portrays a way of life that has disappeared for ever.

If one theme unifies the 11 tales collected here, it is that of longing. Written after her return from Kenya and during the dark days of the Nazi occupation, they derive their themes and locales from Isak Dinesen's childhood in Denmark. Isak Dinesen was the pen-name of Karen Blixen, who was born in Rungsted, Denmark in 1885. After studying art at Copenhagen, Paris and Rome, she married her cousin, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, in 1914. Together they went to Kenya to manage a coffee plantation. After their divorce in 1921, she continued to run the plantation until a collapse in the coffee market forced her back to Denmark in 1931.

Lucan has been orphaned and Zosine has been deserted, and London is a hostile place for two young girls without a home. Bound together by poverty, grief and their shared years at school, they set out to make a future for themselves in new surroundings. They are adopted by the austere, puritanical Reverend Pennhallow and his wife, and in their large, gloomy house they become immersed in study. But, after a chain of disturbing events, it does not take long before they realize that the cleric and his wife are not all they seem to be ...

Romantics, adventurers, sensualists, melancholics and dreamers inhabit the bizarre and exotic world conjured up in these seven intricately interwoven tales, whose settings range from Tuscany and Elsinore, to a dhow on its way from Lamu to Zanzibar.Proclaimed a masterpiece on its publication in 1934, this collection is shot through with themes of love and desire - from the maiden lady who now believes herself to have been the grand courtesan of her time, to the Count whose wife is so jealous that she cannot bear him to admire her jewels, and Lincoln Forsner, an Englishman whose search for a woman he met in a brothel leads him into many strange adventures.

These five rich, witty and magical stories from the author of Out of Africa include one of her most well known tales, ‘Babette’s Feast’, which was made into the classic film. It tells the story of a French cook working in a puritanical Norwegian community, who treats her employers to the decadent feast of a lifetime. There is also a real-life Prospero and his Ariel in ‘Tempests’, a mysterious pearl-fisher in ‘The Diver’ and a brief, tragic encounter in ‘The Ring’. All the stories have a mystic, fairy-tale quality, linked by themes of angels, the sea, dreams and fate. They were among the last to be written by Isak Dinesen, and show her as a master of short fiction.

Spanning every stage of Isak Dinesen's career, this collection of tales includes Carnival, The Proud Lady, Second Meeting, and other works that have not previously appeared in book form in English

Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith.Karen Blixen, author of the acclaimed memoir Out of Africa, was also a master of the short story form: her tales offer luminous meditations on rebirth and redemption, on the mystery and unexpectedness of human behaviour. Alongside 'Babette's Feast', this selection also includes 'Sorrow-Acre', often thought to be one of her finest stories.'Tales as delicate as Venetian glass', The New York Times

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time In this book, the author of Seven Gothic Tales gives a true account of her life on her plantation in Kenya. She tells with classic simplicity of the ways of the country and the natives: of the beauty of the Ngong Hills and coffee trees in blossom: of her guests, from the Prince of Wales to Knudsen, the old charcoal burner, who visited her: of primitive festivals: of big game that were her near neighbors--lions, rhinos, elephants, zebras, buffaloes--and of Lulu, the little gazelle who came to live with her, unbelievably ladylike and beautiful. The Random House colophon made its debut in February 1927 on the cover of a little pamphlet called "Announcement Number One." Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, the company's founders, had acquired the Modern Library from publishers Boni and Liveright two years earlier. One day, their friend the illustrator Rockwell Kent stopped by their office. Cerf later recalled, "Rockwell was sitting at my desk facing Donald, and we were talking about doing a few books on the side, when suddenly I got an inspiration and said, 'I've got the name for our publishing house. We just said we were go-ing to publish a few books on the side at random. Let's call it Random House.' Donald liked the idea, and Rockwell Kent said, 'That's a great name. I'll draw your trademark.' So, sitting at my desk, he took a piece of paper and in five minutes drew Random House, which has been our colophon ever since." Throughout the years, the mission of Random House has remained consistent: to publish books of the highest quality, at random. We are proud to continue this tradition today. This edition is set from the first American edition of 1937 and commemorates the seventy-fifth anniversary of Random House.

With classic simplicity and a painter's feeling for atmosphere and detail, Isak Dinesen tells of the years she spent from 1914 to 1931 managing a coffee plantation in Kenya.

Last Tales is a collection of twelve of the last tales that Isak Dinesen wrote before her death in 1962. They include seven tales from Albondocani, a projected novel that was never completed; "The Caryatids," an unfinished Gothic tale of a couple bedeviled by an old letter and a gypsy's spell; and three tales of winter, including "Converse at Night in Copenhagen," a drunken, all-night conversation between a boy-king, a prostitute, and a poor young poet. "The dozen stories in this...collection may be the literary testament of one of the most skilled but least prolific writers of the twentieth century.... The characters are large, heroic figures and they are brought to earth with a resounding crash. Such men and women are rare in contemporary fiction: the art to make them live vitally...as Dinesen does...is rarer still." -- Time"A writer with a powerful imagination and a shrewd intelligence."-- The New York Times Book Review

Originally published in 1934, Seven Gothic Tales, the first book by "one of the finest and most singular artists of our time" (The Atlantic), is a modern classic. Here are seven exquisite tales combining the keen psychological insight characteristic of the modern short story with the haunting mystery of the nineteenth-century Gothic tale, in the tradition of writers such as Goethe, Hoffmann, and Poe. "These tales are a modern refinement of German romanticism. ...They are peopled, or haunted, by ghosts of a past age, voluptuaries dreaming of the singers and ballerinas of the operas of Mozart and Gluck, young men who are too melancholy to enjoy love or too perverse to profit by it, maidens dedicated to chastity and others hopeful of a gentlemanly seduction; their generally fantastic adventures are exquisitely played."-- The New York Times"[Seven Gothic Tales is] in that special realm in which artistry is more real than reality" -- Time

From the author of the timeless classic Out of Africa five hauntingly evoked, sensuously realized stories and a novella "that belong in that special realm in which artistry is more real than reality" (TIME). - Ehrengard is Now a Netflix Film. "Dinesen's stories are the work of a writer with a powerful imagination and a shrewd intelligence." --The New York Times Book Review In the classic "Babette's Feast," a mysterious Frenchwoman prepares sumptuous feast for a gathering of religious ascetics and, in doing so, introduces them to the true essence of grace. In "The Immortal Story," a miserly old tea-trader living in Canton wishes for power and finds redemption as he turns an oft-told sailors' tale into reality for a young man and woman. And in the magnificent novella Ehrengard, Dinesen tells of the powerful yet restrained rapport between a noble Wagnerian beauty and rakish artist.

In Isak Dinesen's universe, the magical enchantment of the fairy tale and the moral resonance of myth coexist with an unflinching grasp of the most obscure human strengths and weaknesses. A despairing author abandons his wife, but in the course of a long night's wandering, he learns love's true value and returns to her, only to find her a different woman than the one he left. A landowner, seeking to prove a principle, inadvertently exposes the ferocity of mother love. A wealthy young traveler melts the hauteur of a lovely woman by masquerading as her aged and loyal servant. Shimmering and haunting, Dinesen's Winter's Tales transport us, through their author's deft guidance of our desire to imagine, to the mysterious place where all stories are born.

El libro emblem tico de Dinesen: la historia de su pasi n por una tierra que se convierte en su destino. Una de las narraciones m s perfectas de la literatura contempor nea. «Yo ten a una granja en frica, al pie de las colinas de Ngong... Reci n casada, una joven danesa, arist crata y refinada, hija y hermana de militares, viaja a Kenia, donde permanece durante diecisiete a os. Esta experiencia da lugar a una novela que es una encendida declaraci n de amor a unos paisajes, a unas gentes y a unas culturas situadas en el polo opuesto de lo que hab a sido su pasado familiar y social. Pose da por la misma pulsi n de Sherezade, Isak Dinesen nos sumerge en un relato que se prolonga a lo largo de p ginas encantadas: el de su vida en frica y el de la vida de los que la rodeaban, europeos o somal es, kikuyus o masais. Memorias de frica es no s lo una de las narraciones m s perfectas de la literatura contempor nea, sino tambi n la historia de su pasi n por una tierra que se convierte en su destino, en revelaci n de la pluralidad fascinante del mundo y sus gentes. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION The emblematic book by Dinesen: the story of her passion for a land that becomes her destiny. One of the most perfect narratives in contemporary literature. "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills..." Newly married, a young Danish woman--aristocratic and refined, the daughter and sister of military men--travels to Kenya, where she remains for seventeen years. This experience gives rise to a novel that is a fervent declaration of love for landscapes, people, and cultures that stand in stark contrast to her family and social background. Possessed by the same storytelling impulse as Scheherazade, Isak Dinesen immerses us in a narrative that unfolds over enchanted pages: the story of her life in Africa and of the lives of those around her--Europeans or Somalis, Kikuyus or Masai. Out of Africa is not only one of the most perfect narratives in contemporary literature, but also the story of her passion for a land that becomes her destiny--a revelation of the fascinating diversity of the world and its peoples.