Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke was a Danish author best known for her memoir Out of Africa, written under the pen name Isak Dinesen and adapted into the Academy Award-winning motion picture Out of Africa, directed by Sydney Pollack.

Karen Blixen lived a tumultuous life: her father hanged himself when she was 10; she contracted syphilis from her philandering husband, leaving her unable to have children; she lost the love of her life—Denys Finch Hatton—in a plane crash when he was just 44; her African farm—a coffee plantation—failed, forcing her to return home to Denmark bankrupt.

If life’s lessons are borne of experience, then Karen Blixen earned her doctorate living in Africa. Her memoirs of the seventeen years in British East Africa (now Kenya) became a best-selling book and multi-award-winning film.

It was memories of her experiences that mattered to Karen Blixen—moments that “fixed ” themselves in her mind.

Of her deep love for Denys Finch Hatton—the aristocratic big game hunter (played by Robert Redford in the movie) and major character in her memoir, she wrote,

Baroness Blixen learned that enormous obstacles can be overcome one step at a time.

And how challenges help us appreciate life and put things into perspective.

On seeing what lies ahead in the future, she wrote,

As a landowner, Karen Blixen wielded great power over her tenants, but she respected and admired native Africans.

Karen felt that dreams set you free.

In the 1920’s, many European settlers from the aristocratic elite saw British East Africa (Kenya) as a timeless paradise.

To a large part, life has its own plan for us. Karen Blixen found truth in the proverb “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry”, yet she experienced life to the full and found success in adversity.

Some say Karen Blixen died from the effects of syphilis, others that it was anorexia nervosa that killed her. During the 1950’s, her health declined and she had a third of her stomach removed due to an ulcer. She passed away in 1962 at the age of 77.

The suburb in Kenya where once she had a coffee plantation is named after her—simply, “Karen”.

Listen to John Barry’s beautiful score as you scroll through images of Kenya … and maybe you will fall in love with Africa.

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Robert Redford and Meryl Streep in one of the screen’s great epic romances. Directed by Oscar winner Sydney Pollack, Out of Africa is the fascinating true story of Karen Blixen, a strong-willed woman who, with her philandering husband (Klaus Maria Brandauer), runs a coffee plantation in Kenya, circa 1914. To her astonishment, she soon discovers herself falling in love with the land, its people and a mysterious white hunter (Redford).

With the soundtrack to Out of Africa, composer John Barry really “delivered on his intent: a lush, romantic masterpiece for the ages.”—John McCulley.