Den Afrikanske Farm

In this autobiographical novel, the Danish writer Karen Blixen recounts her long sojourn in Kenya, where, from 1914, she ran a coffee plantation alongside her husband, the Swedish baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke. Initially financed by Karen's family, the estate became hers alone after the couple's separation in 1921. Faced with poor harvests and then the global economic crisis, she was ultimately forced to sell the plantation and returned to Denmark ruined in 1931, after seventeen years spent in Africa. It was upon her return that she turned to writing, first publishing a collection of short stories under the male pseudonym Isak Dinesen with the American publisher Robert Haas. According to the Royal Danish Library, this first novel by Karen Blixen was written in English and first published in the United States under her pen name. It was subsequently translated by the author herself: her English typescript, preserved among her personal papers, bears the Danish translation written in pencil. However, other sources maintain that the true first edition was published in London, in English, under the baroness's real name, shortly before the Danish edition, and that the novel was in fact first written in Danish and then translated into English.

The book inspired Sydney Pollack's film Out of Africa (1985), starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, which won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.