Karen Blixen

Karen Christence Dinesen was born on April 17, 1885, at the family manor Rungstedlund. In 1914, she married Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke and moved to British East Africa (Kenya), where she operated a 4,000-acre coffee plantation at the foot of the Ngong Hills for seventeen years.

Following the collapse of the farm, Blixen returned to Denmark and devoted herself to storytelling. Writing in English under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen, she captivated the literary world with Seven Gothic Tales (1934) and her immortal memoir Out of Africa (1937), opening with the famous line: 'I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.' Her short masterpiece Babette's Feast was adapted into the 1987 Academy Award-winning film.