Isak Dinesen’s Ecological Power

Danish writer Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen (1885-1962) was colonial plantation manager, big-game hunter, animal rights activist, nature conservationist, flower gardener, and much more. Most importantly, Dinesen wrote thought-provoking, mind-bending, boundary-shifting tales that can help us think constructively and creatively about many facets of life on our troubled planet. Isak Dinesen’s Ecological Power reexamines Dinesen in the context of 21st-century debates about time, animals, plants, masculinity, families, the idea of nature, and the very question of what it means to be human in a more-than-human world. We urgently need to power our societies and imaginations in new ways, and this book reconsiders Dinesen’s stories as an inexhaustible and so far largely untapped source of ecocultural energy.