BOOKS

Babette’s Feast

Babette's Feast

Curator Reviews

Mary Gordon

Here, Isak Dinesen explores the question of art, its life giving potential, the road it travels, sometimes parallel to, sometimes in direct collision with morality, acts of generosity and grace that, seemingly different, have the same source. Babette says these words that continually inspire and encourage me: “All that an artist asks is this: give me leave to do my utmost.”

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René Redzepi

This is a Danish classic. As a cook in Scandinavia, reading this book makes you understand why Scandinavians have such a strange relationship with the act of pleasure. It makes you think about the impact religion has had on the enjoyment of things, particularly food. In other words, after I read this I understand why it can be so bleak here up in the Protestant north.

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Mary Gordon

Here, Isak Dinesen explores the question of art, its life giving potential, the road it travels, sometimes parallel to, sometimes in direct collision with morality, acts of generosity and grace that, seemingly different, have the same source. Babette says these words that continually inspire and encourage me: “All that an artist asks is this: give me leave to do my utmost.”

View Mary Gordon's Top 10 Favorite Books
Sjón

If what make a work of literature a classic is its ability to be a mirror held up against all times and all human societies — the personal experience and the political one — I think this short novel by Isak Dinesen (or Karen Blixen in her homeland, Denmark) must be in the process of becoming one. Read against our own times it can bee seen as a simple tale about a woman on the run from civil war who seeks refuge in an isolated community. Bringing nothing along with her into her exile but her natural kind spirit and knowledge of the culture of the culinary arts, Babette makes a quiet existence for herself as a simple housekeeper until the day she gets the opportunity to show and share her extraordinary skills. And there is nothing simple about that.

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