James Baquet

    By the strangest of coincidences, Danish novelist Karen Blixen was born and died in the same years as her countryman, the physicist Niels Bohr. Whereas he was born in October of 1885, she was born earlier, in April of that year. She died in September 1962; he died two months later, in November. They are as close to contemporary as you will find amongst two famous people from the same country.

    Born Karen Dinesen, because of her marriage to her second cousin — a Swedish baron named Bror von Blixen-Finecke — she became Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke. She used numerous pen names, including Tania Blixen, Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel. But she is perhaps best known as Isak Dinesen.

    She and her new husband established a coffee plantation in Kenya. The marriage failed after a few years, but she stayed on to manage the plantation. She came alive in Africa, and her life there inspired the book “Out of Africa,” which was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford.

    She later wrote of the life she had so loved, “Here at long last one was in a position not to give a damn for all conventions, here was a new kind of freedom which until then one had only found in dreams!”

    Unfortunately, circumstances forced her to return to Denmark at age 46 to start over.

    Her first major work, “Seven Gothic Tales,” was published in the United States in 1934, and only slightly later in Great Britain and Denmark. Her second book was the aforementioned “Out of Africa,” a memoir of her 17 years on that continent. The later story “Babette’s Feast” would also be made into a film; it tells the story of a chef who wins the lottery and spends it all on one extravagant meal.

    Her books were written in English. She then translated them into Danish herself. Her stories were often set in the 19th century, with an old-fashioned storytelling style.

    She died at Rungstedlund, her family estate at age 77, possibly from complications due to conditions she suffered in Africa.

    Vocabulary

    Which word above means:

    1. a kind of “lucky draw,” where you buy a ticket and hope to win some money

    2. care very much (usually used in the negative)

    3. ridiculously expensive

    4. when two things happen at the same time in a surprising way

    5. like a pseudonym, when used by an author (like “Mark Twain”)

    6. said before

    7. autobiography

    8. like a large farm

    9. a sort of royal person, below a king

    10. a high-class cook