Babette's Feast and Other Anecdotes of Destiny
by Isak Dinesen
Our Price: $6.90
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Isak DinesenEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1988-02-12
ISBN: 039475929X
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Babette's Feast and Other Anecdotes of Destiny
Book Review: The Immortal Story and Others
Summary: 5 Stars
It's a fact that the best stories of all are those that nowadays are told mainly to children. No grown-up author would dare to invent a story like "The Snow Queen", "Thumbelina" or "Beauty and the Beast", and few would be able to.
If any writer comes close to the unforced magic of those stories no-one ever had to write, it must be Isak Dinesen. Sadly her output of fiction was small: this book, "Seven Gothic Tales", "Winter's Tales", "Last Tales", and her novel, the curious "Angelic Avengers", not quite a parody but not exactly serious, an entire book written in inverted commas.
Is there such a thing as Destiny? Do our intertwining lives somehow form a pattern like an inconceivably vast parquet-floor? Looking around I'm forced to say, No. But the creators of the "Arabian Nights" thought so, and Karen Blixen, at least when she turned into Isak Dinesen, clearly agreed with them, or tried to. Perhaps that's why she liked to dwell in the past, usually the late 18th or early 19th centuries, when it still seemed credible that a life might form an intricate shape, as if poured into a mould.
These stories are conceived and executed with a skill as dazzling as lightning and as quiet as summer grass. You feel she could amaze the reader far more if she chose, but that her profound courtesy prevents her. When she pauses for a moment to explain how her characters feel or why they react the way they do, she tells you things so piercingly correct that you feel almost shocked. At the bottom of these stories is a mystery that is not at all philosophical, a sadness that is not tragic, a poetry not made up of beautiful words, and a wisdom like that of a child who says things that she herself doesn't understand.
Literary Criticism & Collections Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Audiobooks on Cassette
- Audiobooks on CD
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- e-Books
- Engineering
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Medicine
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Fave Books
The Final Martyrsby Shusaku Endo
New Directions Publishing Corporation; Published: 1994-09; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $91.12
The Hobbit: or There and Back Againby J.R.R. Tolkien
Houghton Mifflin; Published: 1999-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.80
Price in other shops:
Take and Read: Spiritual Reading: An Annotated Listby Eugene H. Peterson
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Published: 1995-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.79
Price in other shops:
The King of Twistby Steve Turner
Hodder & Stoughton Religious; Published: 1992-04-16; Paperback; Book
Price in other shops:
Up to Dateby Steve Turner
Hodder & Stoughton Religious; Published: 1983-02-01; Paperback; Book
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (Signet Classics)by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Signet Classics; Published: 1998-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.02
Price in other shops:
Cry, the Beloved Countryby Alan Paton
Scribner Paperback Fiction; Published: 1995; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.50
Space Trilogyby C. S. Lewis
Scribner Book Company; Published: 1996-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $44.00
Babette's Feast and Other Anecdotes of Destinyby Isak Dinesen
Vintage; Published: 1988-02-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $73.99
The Complete Father Brown (Father Brown Mystery)by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1987-01-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.98
Similar Books and other products
Daguerreotypes and Other Essaysby Isak Dinesen
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1984-01-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.00
Price in other shops:
The Transformation (Metamorphosis) and Other Stories: Works Published During Kafka's Lifetime (Twentieth-Century Classics)by Franz Kafka
Penguin Classics; Published: 1995-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.95
Price in other shops:
Thousand Cranesby Yasunari Kawabata
Vintage; Published: 1996-11-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.90
Price in other shops:
Master and Man and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)by Leo Tolstoy
Penguin Classics; Published: 2005-12-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.23
Price in other shops:
Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storytellerby Judith Thurman
Picador; Published: 1995-10-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.79
Price in other shops:
Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grassby Isak Dinesen
Vintage; Published: 1989-10-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.76
Price in other shops:
Seven Gothic Talesby Isak Dinesen
Vintage; Published: 1991-12-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.90
Price in other shops:
Last Talesby Isak Dinesen
Vintage; Published: 1991-12-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.96
Price in other shops:
Winter's Talesby Isak Dinesen
Vintage; Published: 1993-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.08
Price in other shops:
Babette's FeastRelease date: 2001-01-23; DVD
Best price: $6.44
Price in other shops: