Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton
by Sara Wheeler
List Price:
Our Price: $15.73
You Save: $12.22 (44%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $15.70 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Sara WheelerEdition: Hardcover
Published: 2007-04-24
ISBN: 1400060699
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Random House
Book Reviews of Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton
Book Review: book review
Summary: 4 Stars
Best detailed info on Denys that I have ever read. The book has a unique charm-- it has words that I had to actually look up in order to determine exactly what the author was saying. Her vocabulary will intrigue or frighten you as you read the book, and I think dinner with her would be most memorable.
Summary of Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton
Denys Finch Hatton was adored by women and idolized by men. A champion of Africa, legendary for his good looks, his charm, and his prowess as a soldier, lover, and hunter, Finch Hatton inspired Karen Blixen to write the unforgettable stories in Out of Africa. Now esteemed British biographer Sara Wheeler tells the truth about this extraordinarily charismatic adventurer.Born to an old aristocratic family that had gambled away most of its fortune, Finch Hatton grew up in a world of effortless elegance and boundless power. Tall and graceful, with the soul of a poet and an athlete’s relaxed masculinity, he became a hero without trying at Eton and Oxford. In 1910, searching for novelty and danger, Finch Hatton arrived in British East Africa and fell in love–with a continent, with a landscape, with a way of life that was about to change forever.
Wheeler brilliantly conjures the mystical beauty of Kenya at a time when teeming herds of wild animals roamed unmolested across pristine savannah. No one was more deeply attuned to this beauty than Finch Hatton–and no one more bitterly mourned its passing when the outbreak of World War I engulfed the region in a protracted, bloody guerrilla conflict. Finch Hatton was serving as a captain in the Allied forces when he met Karen Blixen in Nairobi and embarked on one of the great love affairs of the twentieth century.
With delicacy and grace, Wheeler teases out truth from fiction in the liaison that Blixen herself immortalized in Out of Africa. Intellectual equals, bound by their love for the continent and their inimitable sense of style, Finch Hatton and Blixen were genuine pioneers in a land that was quickly being transformed by violence, greed, and bigotry.
Ever restless, Finch Hatton wandered into a career as a big-game hunter and became an expert bush pilot; his passion that led to his affair with the notoriously unconventional aviatrix Beryl Markham. But Markham was no more able to hold him than Blixen had been. Mesmerized all his life by the allure of freedom and danger, Finch Hatton was, writes Wheeler, “the open road made flesh.”
In painting a portrait of an irresistible man, Sara Wheeler has beautifully captured the heady glamour of the vanished paradise of colonial East Africa. In Too Close to the Sun she has crafted a book that is as ravishing as its subject.
General 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 2007-2008 Book Club List
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novelby Lisa See
Random House Trade Paperbacks; Published: 2006-02-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.90
Price in other shops:
Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hattonby Sara Wheeler
Random House; Published: 2007-04-24; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $13.99
Price in other shops:
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldierby Ishmael Beah
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2007-02-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.41
Price in other shops:
The Meaning of Wife: A Provocative Look at Women and Marriage in the Twenty-first Centuryby Anne Kingston
Picador; Published: 2006-03-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.00
Price in other shops:
The Glass Castle: A Memoirby Jeannette Walls
Scribner; Published: 2006-01-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.97
Price in other shops:
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Timeby Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2007-01-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.04
Price in other shops:
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retoldby C.S. Lewis
Harcourt Brace & Company; Published: 1980-07-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.97
Price in other shops:
Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veilby Deborah Rodriguez, Kristin Ohlson
Random House Trade Paperbacks; Published: 2007-12-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.75
Price in other shops:
Suite Francaiseby Irene Nemirovsky
Vintage; Published: 2007-04-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.69
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save Englandby Lynne Olson
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2008-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.36
Price in other shops:
Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guideby Peter Allison
The Lyons Press; Published: 2007-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.94
Price in other shops:
Out of Africa (Modern Library)by Isak Dinesen
Modern Library; Published: 1992-09-05; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.25
Price in other shops:
Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storytellerby Judith Thurman
Picador; Published: 1995-10-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops:
West with the Nightby Beryl Markham
North Point Press; Published: 1982-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.44
Price in other shops:
Rainbow's End: A Memoir of Childhood, War and an African Farmby Lauren St John
Scribner; Published: 2007-04-17; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.00
Price in other shops:
Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nationsby Georgina Howell
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Published: 2008-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.36
Price in other shops:
Edith Wharton (Vintage)by Hermione Lee
Vintage; Published: 2008-04-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.69
Price in other shops:
The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Stormby Juliet Nicolson
Grove Press; Published: 2008-05-13; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.26
Price in other shops:
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africaby Peter Godwin
Back Bay Books; Published: 2008-04-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.54
Price in other shops: