Summary of Anecdotes of Destiny
“Anecdotes of Destiny” is a collection of short stories by Danish author Karen Blixen (published under the pen name Isak Dinesen). The volume includes the stories ‘The Diver’, ’Babette’s Feast’, Tempests’, ‘The Immortal Story’ and ‘The Ring’. ‘Babette’s Feast’ is probably the best-known of these stories and relates how a French chef spends her entire lottery prize to prepare a sumptuous meal for the ascetic people she lives with in a remote Norwegian village.
Reasons to read Anecdotes of Destiny
Most readers will know Karen Blixen for her novel “Out of Africa”, and for her short story collections “Seven Gothic Tales” and “Anecdotes of Destiny”. Two of the stories in “Anecdotes of Destiny” have been turned into movies: ‘The Immortal Story’, a 1968 movie by Orson Welles, and ‘Babette’s Feast’, a Danish movie by Gabriel Axel which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1987 (in the movie, the Norwegian location was moved to a Danish village). Karen Blixen was a long-time candidate for the Nobel Prize but was sadly overlooked. She was awarded several Danish awards such as the Holberg medal and the Ingenio et Arti medal.
Original title: Skæbne-Anekdoter (Babettes gæstebud)
Year of publication: 1958
Nr of pages: 256
For the entire short story collection.
