Longing For Darkness: Kamante’s Tales From Out of Africa.

BEARD, Peter; Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen]; Kamante.

$1,750.00

Item Number: 141122

New York: Harcourt Brace, 1975.

First edition of this collaboration between the famed photographer and author. Quarto, original boards with paper onlay featuring a portrait of Blixen to the front panel, illustrated with 168 drawings by Kamante and 160 photographs and captions by Isak Dinesen collected by Peter Beard. Presentation copy, warmly inscribed by Peter Beard on the front free endpaper, “To Renny, on March 15th … Many Happy returns of the day (infinity sign)’s always, Peter (Beard) Hog Ranch Box 4191 Nairobi.” Beard has added a large original drawing over two pages of Hog Ranch with boars and crocodiles in watering hole. Very good in a very good price-clipped dust jacket. A unique example.

"In one of the most dazzling-and unlikely-books of recent times, the lost world of Isak Dinesen (Baroness Karen Blixen) is stirringly re-created by her old major domo, Kamante, the hero of her classic Out of Africa. Here Kamante gives his version of Out of Africa (related to Peter Beard and then translated from Swahili and handwritten by Kamante's sons), his inspired rendering of the fables Isak Dinesen taught in Karen Coffee Farm School, and his lyrical watercolors"