Babette's Feast and Other Short Stories is a fiction collection written by Danish author Karen Blixen. It was published on June 1, 1993. Karen Blixen also has the pseudonym Isak Dinesen, which is often used by her in her books. Blixen is known for Out of the World and Babette's feast, two major movies now. Also, Blixen was considered several times for a Nobel Prize in Literature.
"Babette's Feast" talks about the main character, Babette who prepares a large feast for religious people for the people she works for, Martina and Philippa. The story narrates the events that led to the dinner party. Matina and Philippa are religious women who decided to abandon Earth's pleasures and focus on giving the poor. Babette suddenly comes up on their doorstep and they discover that she escaped a political problem. The only thing they know about her is that she can cook, so she became their maid and cook. In the end, she had to prepare a large feast for a group of religious people Martina and Philippa know, and she teaches them the meaning of giving and grace.
This is the main and most famous story. The other stories in the collection include "The Ring", which talks about two couples and how their lives are changed in a July. The second story "The Tempest", is a narration of the life of an actress whose life is changed when a shipwreck happened. "The Immortal Story" is a story about a Chinese merchant and his clerk and how their life becomes intertwined in an astonishing. Lastly, "The Diver", which talks about a man that gets so interested in talking with angels that he decides to become one of them, or like them, by building a pair of wings.
The collection earned a lot of positive reviews from worldwide critics. For one, the story was turned into an Oscar-winning movie. The collection earned 4 out of a 5-star rating on Goodreads. One member on Goodreads said: "I am still lost in Dinesen's world. I feel as if I have just eaten a lovely, flaky pastry; something full of layers, flavors and textures that need time to settle before I understand it all... I found passion, hope, despair, joy, love, philosophy, terror, poetry, images that change subtly into unexpected reflections of the world, stories within stories within stories." The New York Times wrote about the stories that they are "fairy stories read in childhood . . . of dreams . . . and of our life as dreams".
