Judith Thurman’s brilliant, National Book Award–winning biography of Isak Dinesen—now with a new foreword by the author A brilliant literary portrait, Isak Dinesen remains the only comprehensive biography of one of the greatest storytellers of our time. Dinesen’s magnificent memoir, Out of Africa, established her as a major twentieth-century author, who was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize. With exceptional grace, Judith Thurman’s classic work explores Dinesen’s life. Until the appearance of this book, the life and art of Isak Dinesen have been—as Dinesen herself wrote of two lovers in a tale—“a pair of locked caskets, each containing the key to the other.” Judith Thurman has provided the master key to them both.

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In Out of Africa, author Isak Dinesen takes a wistful and nostalgic look back on her years living in Africa on a Kenyan coffee plantation. Recalling the lives of friends and neighbours—both African and European—Dinesen provides a first-hand perspective of colonial Africa. Through her obvious love of both the landscape and her time in Africa, Dinesen’s meditative writing style deeply reflects the themes of loss as her plantation fails and she returns to Europe. HarperTorch brings great works of non-fiction and the dramatic arts to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperTorch collection to build your digital library.

"Isak Dinesen . . . had an original approach to life that permeated all her work. She loved storytelling, with the result that most of her essays are quasi-narratives, which proceed not from major to minor premise but from one anecdote to another as the way of making concrete whatever idea she is considering. Her work is a delight and at times a marvel."—The New Yorker "Through these daguerreotypes we begin to understand other periods, the renunciations of World War I, the purpose of houses and mansions, of ritual ceremonials, such as tatooing. We are given a fresh and vivid view of the women's movement . . . which urges that what our 'small society' needs beyond human beings who have demonstrated what they can do, is people who are. 'Indeed, our own time,' she wrote in 1953, 'can be said to need a revision from doing to being.' She demonstrated it in her own work and craft, with courage and with dignity. This collection is as real as a gallery of old daguerreotypes, moving and unfaded. The work, as Hannah Arendt says, of a wise woman."—Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times "These essays . . . have the flavor of good conversation: humorous, easy, personal but not oppressive, the distillation of reading, thought, and experience. Their subjects are of surprisingly current interest. We need make no concessions to the past, need not set our watches back to 'historical.' Isak Dinesen was not a faddish thinker. . . . 'In history it is always the human element that has a chance for eternal life,' Dinesen remarks, and she gives these essays their chance."—Penelope Mesic, Chicago