Out of Africa
Isak Dinesen (Author), Alan Moorehead (Writer of introduction)
"Out of Africa is one of those books that help to explain the present by reconstructing a past that can never be restored. Yet the book was not written to explain anything. It was set down to record a response to a kind of life which was an experience clothed in privilege. Its author, Isak Dinesen, has testified that every word in it was true—and this is impossible for the reader to doubt. Africa did not merely fascinate Isak Dinesen. It drew from her both love and respect to a degree that no other writer has so keenly suggested, though many have tried. From the simple first line of this book to its moving close it bears the impress of a writer who said only “yes” to life no matter what the day brought. “I had a farm in Africa,” she begins, “at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.”" -- Foreword
Print Book, English, 1963
Time Incorporated, New York, 1963