In the following review, Woods enthusiastically praises Out of Africa.

The book [Out of Africa ] which Isak Dinesen has made from her life on an African farm is a surprising piece of writing to come from the author of Seven Gothic Tales. After dazzling the public with what Dorothy Canfield called "the strange slanting beauty and controlled fantasy" of the first book, this amazing Danish master of English prose has stepped now into the clearest reality, the utmost classic simplicity, the most direct—yet the most exquisitely restrained—truth. But it is an incandescent simplicity; the reality is of the spirit as well as of object and event; the truth is a cry from the heart. And after all the books that we have had out of Africa, I think this is the one we have been waiting for.

Like the Ngong hills—which are amongst the...