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''Out of Africa'' is a memoir by the Danish author Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke. The book, first published in 1937, recounts events of the seventeen years when Blixen made her home in Kenya, then called British East Africa. The book is a lyrical meditation on Blixen’s life on her coffee plantation, as well as a tribute to some of the people who touched her life there. It is also a vivid snapshot of African colonial life in the last decades of the British Empire. Blixen wrote the book in English and then rewrote it in Danish. ==Background== :''"I had a farm in Africa 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."'' Karen Blixen moved to British East Africa in late 1913, at the age of 28, to marry her second cousin, the Swedish Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, and make a life in the British colony known today as Kenya. The young Baron and Baroness bought farmland in the Ngong Hills about ten miles (16 km) southwest of Nairobi, which at the time was still shaking off its rough origins as a supply depot on the Uganda Railway. The Blixens had planned to raise dairy cattle, but Bror developed their farm as a coffee plantation instead.〔Lorenzetti, Linda Rice, '' ‘Out of Africa': Karen Blixen's coffee years'', Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, September 1, 1999〕 It was managed by Europeans, including, at the start, Karen’s brother Thomas – but most of the labor was provided by “squatters.” This was the colonial term for local Kikuyu tribespeople who guaranteed the owners 180 days of labour in exchange for wages and the right to live and farm on the uncultivated lands〔Dinesen, Isak, ''Out of Africa'', from the combined Vintage International Edition of ''Out of Africa'' and ''Shadows on the Grass'', New York 1989, p. 9〕 which, in many cases, had simply been theirs before the British arrived and claimed them.〔Thurman, Judith, ''Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller'', St. Martin’s Press, 1983, pp. 128〕 When the First World War drove coffee prices up, the Blixen family invested in the business, and in 1917 Karen and Bror expanded their holdings to six thousand acres (24 km²). The new acquisitions included the site of the house which features so prominently in ''Out of Africa''.〔Lorenzetti, '' 'Out of Africa': Karen Blixen's coffee years''〕 The Blixens’ marriage started well – Karen and Bror went on hunting safaris which Karen later remembered as paradisiacal.〔Thurman, ''Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller'', p. 132〕 But it was not ultimately successful: Bror, a talented hunter and a well liked companion, was an unfaithful husband and a poor businessman.〔Herne, Brian, ''White Hunters: The Golden Age of Safaris'', Macmillan, 1999, p. 115〕 In 1921 the couple separated, and in 1925 they were divorced; Karen took over the management of the farm on her own. She was well suited to the work – fiercely independent and capable, she loved the land and liked her native workers. But the climate and soil of her particular tract was not ideal for coffee-raising; the farm endured several unexpected dry years with low yields, and the falling market price of coffee was no help.〔Herne, ''White Hunters: The Golden Age of Safaris'', p. 117〕 The farm sank further and further into debt until, in 1931, the family corporation forced her to sell it. The buyer, Remi Martin, who planned to carve it into residential plots, offered to allow Blixen to stay in the house. She declined, and returned to Denmark.〔 Blixen moved back to the family’s estate of Rungstedlund and lived with her mother; there she took up again the writing career that she had begun, but abandoned, in her youth. In 1934 she published a fiction collection, ''Nine Tales'', now known as ''Seven Gothic Tales'', and in 1937 she published her Kenyan memoir, ''Out of Africa''. The book’s title was likely derived from the title of a poem, "''Ex Africa''," she had written in 1915, while recuperating in a Danish hospital from her fight with syphilis. The poem’s title is probably an abbreviation of the famous ancient Latin adage (credited to sages from Aristotle to Pliny to Erasmus) ''Ex Africa semper aliquid novi'', which translates as “Out of Africa, always something new.”〔Feinberg, Harvey M., and Solow, Joseph B., “Out of Africa,” The Journal of African History (2002), 43: 255–261 Cambridge University Press〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Out of Africa」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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