The film is less a direct adaptation of the book than it is a love story. Written by Kurt Luedtke and drawing heavily on two biographies of Blixen, it is a compressed chronological recounting of Blixen's Kenyan years that focuses particularly on her troubled marriage and her affair with Finch Hatton. Some of Blixen's more poetic narration and a few episodes from the book do appear in the film, such as Blixen's work running supply waggons during the war, the farm's fire and its financial troubles, and her struggles to find a home for her Kikuyu squatters. Most of the main characters are identified by their real names, though substantial liberties are taken with some of the details.