Book description
And it happened when Martine or Philippa spoke to Babette that they
would get no answers, and would wonder if she had even heard what they
said Orshe would sit immovable on the three-legged kitchen chair, her
strong hands in her lap and her dark eyes wide open, as enigmatical and
fatal as a Pythia upon her tripod. At such moments, they realised that
Babette was deep, and that in the soundings of her being there were
passions, there were memories and longings of which they knew nothing at
all. Babette s Feast is a sublime celebration of eating, drinking and
sensual pleasure. In Isak Dinesen s life-affirming short story, two
elderly sisters living in a remote, god-fearing Norwegian community take
in a mysterious refugee from Paris one night and are rewarded for
their kindness with the most decadent, luxurious feast of a lifetime.
Isak Dinesen was the pen-name of Karen Blixen, who was born in Rungsted,
Denmark in 1885. After studying art at Copenhagen, Paris and 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. Although she had written
occasional contributions to Danish periodicals since 1905 (under the nom
de plume of Osceola), her real d but took place in 1934 with the
publication of Seven Gothic Tales, written in English under her
pen-name. Out of Africa (1937) is an autobiographical account of the
years she spent in Kenya. Most of her subsequent books were published in
English and Danish simultaneously. She died in Rungsted in 1962.
