Isak Dinesen Livres

" J'ai possédé une ferme en Afrique, au pied du Ngong. La ligne de l'Equateur passait dans les montagnes, à vingt-cinq milles au Nord. " Ainsi commence Karen Blixen, qui, en dévidant simplement ses souvenirs, est parvenue à écrire le livre le plus dense, le plus nourri, le plus vivant qu'aucun Européen ayant vécu en Afrique ait rapporté sur ce continent. Une immense chronique africaine, pleine de bonhomie et de poésie, l'évocation d'un monde brûlant, violent, naïf et passionnant.

In the classic "Babette's Feast," a mysterious Frenchwoman prepares a 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 a rakish artist. Hauntingly evoked and sensuously realized, the five stories and novella collected here have the hold of "fairy stories read in childhood . . . of dreams . . . and of our life as dreams" (The New York Times).

'As for me I have one ambition only: to invent stories, very beautiful stories' Gothic, expansive and truly spellbinding, Karen Blixen's short stories offer incisive psychological portraits and imaginative visions of war, longing and tender love. Here, an orphan boy creates an elaborate fantasy of a life of grandeur, a feudal lord sets a peasant woman a deadly task, and a young woman resists against her captors, in the midst of conflict.

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.

Martine and Philippa are the daughters of a forceful priest of a Lutheran sect. Reared to deny all earthly pleasures, they live out their lives performing good work on behalf of the inhabitants of the tiny Scandinavian fishing village in which they reside. When Babette, the French refugee to whom they have given shelter, asks to repay them by preparing a sumptuous feast, they are forced to reconcile their father's teachings with the elaborate and bountiful meal prepared by Babette for themselves and the other aging villagers.

Here is a rich new biographical perspective on the brilliant storyteller whose sophisticated romantic fiction...made her an international success and a perpetual candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature..._these letters+ contain the raw material that was later transformed into her classic memoir Out Of Africa.