Out of Africa is the memoir of a Danish baroness's time on in Kenya in the early twentieth century, written under the pseudonym of Isak Dinesen.

It is a book wonderfully evocative of both place and person, with the Dinesen's own tastes and personality flavoring the whole narrative but not overwhelming it. In a way it is much like a richer version of a travel book, for it is clear that Dinesen always regarded herself as alien, even though Africa holds a special significance for her.

I suspect some people will be put off by expectations of racist, colonialist attitudes, and certainly Blixen is an aristocrat at heart, and no one would write so incautiously today of differences between peoples. However it would be both a loss and a mistake to be put off for this: Dinesen is always fair and it is as foolish to expect that she would write to current standards of political correctness as to expect that our era's writings will stand up to such scrutiny in the twenty second century.