The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood
In an open cart Elspeth Huxley set off with her parents to travel to Thika in Kenya. As pioneering settlers, they built a house of grass, ate off a damask cloth spread over packing cases, and discovered—the hard way—the world of the African. With an extraordinary gift for detail and a keen sense...
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In an open cart Elspeth Huxley set off with her parents to travel to Thika in Kenya. As pioneering settlers, they built a house of grass, ate off a damask cloth spread over packing cases, and discovered—the hard way—the world of the African. With an extraordinary gift for detail and a keen sense of humor, Huxley recalls her childhood on the small farm at a time when Europeans waged their fortunes on a land that was as harsh as it was beautiful. For a young girl, it was a time of adventure and freedom, and Huxley paints an unforgettable portrait of growing up among the Masai and Kikuyu people, discovering both the beauty and the terrors of the jungle, and enduring the rugged realities of the pioneer life.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780141183787 (0141183780)
ASIN: 141183780
Publish date: February 1st 2000
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Pages no: 281
Edition language: English
Category:
Classics,
Non Fiction,
Travel,
Autobiography,
Memoir,
Biography,
History,
Cultural,
Africa,
Biography Memoir,
Kenya
Huxley's beautifully written, enchantingly evocative and poignant memoir about her childhood years living in Kenya, 1912-1914 with her parents.
Not my favorite book about Africa. I wanted (unfairly) this book to be Out of Africa, which is one of my favorites, but I felt like this book was less about Africa as a continent and more about Europeans in Africa who don't really want to be there. It took me several chapters to figure out the two ...
video blurb - When a young Edwardian family leaves the shores of England to build a home in the wilderness of East Africa, what they encounter is beyond their imagination, but forever remembered by their 11-year-old daughter.Based on the beloved memoir by Elspeth Huxley, THE FLAME TREES OF THIKA bri...
Really lovely. She was able to capture her childhood recollections and express them without much adult overlay. Just very straightforward, as a child would be.
In 1913, when the author was six years old, she and her mother and father went to British East Africa (B.E.A.) to start a coffee plantation. This was nearly 100 years ago, when that area was mostly unsettled. Her father bought some property, sight unseen, in the middle of nowhere among the Kikuyu pe...
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