Within this colonial setting the stories of Out of Africa take place, and are relayed to us through the eyes of Dinesen. Natives are forbidden to own land under the laws of the Protectorate. On the farm a village of Kikuyu people live, and are referred to as “squatters”, who must provide labor to the farm in exchange for the right to live there. Some of her workers are Somali, and come from the “Somali town” that “was further away from Nairobi”. Within the country the British had established Reserves, to which they relocated the native inhabitants. The whole country was part of a British protectorate. It’s a vast landholding (6,000 acres) set high along the Ngong Hills near Nairobi. The book is a series of stories of happenings set mostly in and around the farm. There are mentions of a few other white folks, but the focus is primarily on the native Africans Dinesen encounters in her life on the farm. Her husband is mentioned in passing only once or twice (the divorce not at all), and Finch-Hatton is discussed as a friend, who, unfortunately, meets his demise in a plane crash shortly before Dinesen leaves Africa. But while the setting is her farm in Kenya, the focus of the book is often not on her. Out of Africa is often referred to as Dinesen’s memoir of her time in Kenya. She returned alone to Denmark in 1931 where she spent the rest of her life. Karen remained on the farm until grasshoppers, drought and the Depression forced her to sell. She became romantically involved with Denys Finch-Hatton after her divorce. The marriage was not successful (he was a philanderer and gave her syphilis), and they separated in 1921. With the backing of their families they bought land and started a coffee plantation. Born Karen Dinesen in Denmark in 1885, she and Baron Blor Blixen-Finecke relocated to British East Africa (to what is today the country of Kenya) and were married in Mombasa in 1914. Karen Blixen (or more formally Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke) published in English under the pen name Isak Dinesen. Tacitus’s Latin translation of Herodotus’s history of the Persian wars, and a personal motto of Karen Blixen, who published in English under the pen name Isak Dinesen, as quoted in the Epigraph to Out of Africa. “Equitare, Arcum tendere, Veritatem dicere” or in translation “To ride, shoot straight, and tell the truth”
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