"This memoir recounts the time Karen Blixen (a Danish author) spent in Kenya from 1914. When I saw the 1985 movie version with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, it just killed me and inspired me to read the book. Both make me sob so much I can hardly breathe. Later, my assistant gave me a beautiful old copy, which makes me treasure the story more. I even stayed in the Karen Blixen suite at the Hotel D’Angleterre in her native Copenhagen. The relationship between Blixten and the Safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton broke my heart. It’s a book about finding and losing love"

"If what make a work of literature a classic is its ability to be a mirror held up against all times and all human societies — the personal experience and the political one — I think this short novel by Isak Dinesen (or Karen Blixen in her homeland, Denmark) must be in the process of becoming one. Read against our own times it can bee seen as a simple tale about a woman on the run from civil war who seeks refuge in an isolated community. Bringing nothing along with her into her exile but her natural kind spirit and knowledge of the culture of the culinary arts, Babette makes a quiet existence for herself as a simple housekeeper until the day she gets the opportunity to show and share her extraordinary skills. And there is nothing simple about that."