Part I: Kamante and Lulu

Out of Africa opens with a description of East Africa—of its views "immensely wide" and its "heroic and romantic air." From 1913-1931 Isak Dinesen (the pseudonym of Karen Christentze Dinesen Blixen) owned and operated a coffee plantation on the outskirts of what is now Nairobi, Kenya, until financial problems forced her to sell it and return to her home in Denmark. Her six thousand acres of land is used for different purposes: six hundred for the coffee beans and one thousand for the East African "squatters" who work the farm a set number of days for the right to live there. The remaining acres include a wide expanse of forest.

Dinesen finds it difficult to get to know the East Africans who work on her farm but eventually becomes friendly with them. Moreover, she is impressed with their courage, sincerity, and closeness...