The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood

by Elspeth Huxley

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0141183780
• ISBN13: 9780141183787
• Release Date: February 2000
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Childhood journey

Lets just say i read this book when i was 15. I am 54 and when i saw the title i jumped quick to put it in my cart. I read many nonfiction books about Africa and this was one of the best. Definitly a 'favorite of all time' book and i recommend reading it whether youre interested in Africa or not. Many of the descriptions and anecdotes in this book are still vivid in my mind, its that good.

The Flame Trees of Thika

This book was rated as good and it should have been rated acceptable. The book that I received has a different cover than the one shown. The cover is creased and the pages are yellowed. It is a good story. I would love to have purchased this book new with a larger print.

When can I get a plane to Africa?!

If you are interested in other cultures and ways of life, this book is a treasure. Yes, there has to be a bit of willing suspension of disbelief that this would be the way a child would see and describe things, but if you can live with the fact that this is an adult looking back on her childhood, it's a small thing to get over. The descriptions I found perfect--very vivid, yet not so extensive that they became boring and slowed down the story. And just in what happens and isn't even excused (her parents leave her with neighbors, she accompanies the neighbor's worker to the city, where he leaves her with some more strangers--we'd be calling the police, and her parents are just slightly inconvenienced! And everyone else there has just left their small children at boarding school, not seeing them for years!), the book gives a lot of food for thought about the realities of life in that time and place.

It's like being there

A wonderful book about everyday life in Africa around 1914 through the eyes of a young child. Every page is filled with wonderful details of the customs of the African tribal people, the English characters are very well defined and interesting. The love of the animals, the tribulations of English settlers who have to deal with lazy unreliable workers,the lack of medical services, everything is so real, it is like being there. Humour is also part of the wonderful, sometimes poetic style of the author.

breathtaking, unforgettable.

This book is a real literary treasure. I read it first as a teenager. It astonished me then, with its unique portrayal of Africa. Who could fail to love the African wilderness and its diverse people after reading The Flame Trees of Thika?! Africa seen through Huxley's youthful eyes is given a magical quality I have never again encountered (though BBC came close to portraying it in their rendition of this book). And it continues to astonish me now, twenty years later (oh dear, I have dated myself). The spectacular visual imagery from that book are a treasured keepsake, and the book itself is nothing less than a 20th Century masterpiece. It is a priceless gem and well worth the cost.

Embers from the age of empire

This book is on the same sort of rank and the same genre as Out of Africa. A literary autobiography set in Kenya during an uncertain and enterprising colonial era before the First World War.It's strongest elements include a deep sensitivity to the travails of animal life up against white hunters and farmers, very full accounts of the Kikuyu people and their rivalries with other Africans and it also paints a vivid portrait of pioneering planters and their servants in the shadow of the Great War. The vantage of the book is greater than that of Out of Africa by Blixen being a less personal tale. it is a faithful, sometimes harrowing tale culled from an excellent store of memories representing times and scenes gone by. Huxley is not short on romance and tragedy.This book is an ideal companion to those interested in the British Empire and African anthropology. For naturalists it provides breathtaking accounts of white hunters and their quarry as a retrospective commentary on man's abuse of Africa's wild heritage. Huxley writes quietly, sensitively and impartially providing philosophic insights in a heuristic and magical narrative. Always compelling, this is an important primary text.

Highly recommended reading

Elspeth Huxley is in my opinion much underrated. She is a magnificent writer, and should be ranked right up there with Isac Dinesen. Her childhood recollections, both this novel and 'The Mottled Lizard', are not only an insight into a curious cast of East African pioneers, but an unpretentious and innocent view of Africans, colonialists and their common humanity through the eyes of a young girl. Highly recommended reading.