
If one theme unifies the 11 tales collected here, it is that of longing. Written after her return from Kenya & during the dark days of the Nazi occupation, they derive their themes & locales from Isak Dinesen`s childhood in Denmark. Isak Dinesen was the pen-name of Karen Blixen, who was born in Rungsted, Denmark in 1885. After studying art at Copenhagen, Paris & Rome, she married her cousin, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, in 1914. Together they went to Kenya to manage a coffee plantation. After their divorce in 1921, she continued to run the plantation until a collapse in the coffee market forced her back to Denmark in 1931.