Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhya বিভূতিভূষণ বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়ের “Mountain of the Moon” চাঁদের পাহাড় Chander Pahar, 1937 which was an “African-adventure” SciFi was the topic of an earlier blog post.
Here I present: Karen Blixen [Isak Dinesen](1885-1962), “Out of Africa: A Memoir”, 1937 also an “African story”; and a “biopic” adaptation to the 1985 film (with actress Meryl Streep as the protagonist “Karen Blixen”).
Karen Blixen, “Out of Africa: A Memoir”, 1937 begins the book as follows: Part 1, Chapter 1.
“Ngong Farm”
“I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred (100) miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand (6,000) feet.
Uganda Railway is the setting of both 1937 books “Mountain on the Moon“, & “Out of Africa“. Karen Blixen moved to Kenya in late 1913, at the age of 28, to marry Bror von Blixen-Finecke (her second cousin). The Blixen couple bought farmland in “Ngong” (shown on the Map ABOVE), which is ten (10) miles southwest of Nairobi, KENYA. “Ngong Hills” was at that time shaking off its rough origins as a supply depot for then new Uganda Railway (coastal Mombasa, KENYA to the UGANDA border).
The opening: “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of Ngong Hills.
After 17 years she ends the autobiography with a view (from the train station) of the same hills.
“The outline of the mountain was slowly smoothed and leveled out by the hand of the distance.”
Here I present: Karen Blixen [Isak Dinesen](1885-1962), “Out of Africa: A Memoir”, 1937 also an “African story”, but nonfiction (memoir).
Memoirs are the “memories” of a biography that make for great storytelling.
Karen Blixen, on the coffee-farm began writing her first fiction book “Seven Gothic Tales”, 1934.
Karen Blixen was as capable with fiction as she was with nonfiction “Out of Africa”, 1937.
