`My cook is very good: I taught him everything," is the sort of language which is straight out of the colonial era. Yet Italian-born Kuki Gallmann is talking about contemporary housekeeping arrangements for her home in Kenya. She mentions "my servants" without a trace of embarrassment.

Kuki Gallmann shares other traits with another European writer, who also spent several years of her life in Africa, the Danish author Karen Blixen, who wrote under the name of Isak Dinesan. Both women wrote books about their experiences of life in Africa, and both books were made into feature films. The film of Isak Dinesan's life, Out of Africa, began with Meryl Streep's melancholic rendition of the line "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills". The film starred Streep and Robert Redford, and it went on to win seven Oscars, including Best Picture.

Kuki Gallmann's autobiography of her early years in Africa, I Dreamed of Africa, was published in 1991 and has become an international bestseller, being translated into 18 languages. Filming has recently ended and I Dreamed of Africa will be released later this year, with Kim Basinger and Vincent Perez in the starring roles.

"I knew when I left Italy that I would find adventures and challenges in a completely different life. Africa to me represented the things I'd always missed," Gallmann says. She came to Kenya in 1972 with her husband Paolo and her young son, Emanuele, settling on a ranch called Ol ari Nyiro, north of Nairobi.

Within a decade, both Paolo and Emanuele had died tragically: Paolo in a road accident and Emanuele, by then a teenager, from the bite of a puff adder. Although Gallmann considered leaving Africa with her small daughter, Sveva, at that point, she decided to stay on.

She set about trying to come to terms with the tragedies in two proactive ways. She established the Gallmann Memorial Foundation, which promotes and sponsors the education of Kenyans. "I had to do something that I wouldn't have done if my son had lived," she explains. Then she sat down and wrote the story of her life, I Dreamed of Africa.

The film is bound to bring new readers to the book. Gallmann hopes it will also attract visitors to Kenya. "Kenya doesn't have diamonds or oil, like some other African states. It only has its powerful natural beauty. If this film helps to bring people over to Kenya, then it will have been worthwhile."

She has not yet seen Kim Basinger's portrayal of herself at a younger age and admits to feeling a little apprehensive about it. "I'll see it soon; it'll be a strange experience. I did have input to the film on a consultancy basis, but didn't have any part in the filming."

Now she has written another book, Night of the Lions. This is a collection of anecdotes and stories about her life in Africa over the past 25 years, some of which are definitely stronger than others. For instance, The Camel Trek, an edited diary version of a 1991 journey in the desert, really belongs where it started out - in a private diary, rather than the uncomfortably narcissistic read it becomes within the covers of a book.

The story, Night of the Lions, the title piece of the collection, has been incorporated into the film. This is, in fact, two stories of two different nights involving lions, stories with such a naturally strong narrative that they carry themselves.

Gallmann has built a place on her land called The Nest, which overlooks the Rift Valley, and where she and friends spend time observing some of the region's wildlife. With a roof of thatch and open walls, it is, like a real bird's nest, impossible to lock.

On a visit there a couple of years ago, she caught a glimpse of something tawny disappearing from the shelter. Cautious investigation revealed a large depression on the four-poster in the bedroom, and a sheen of yellow fluff on the counterpane: an enterprising lion had been taking a nap. Now, that's a story to tell your grandchildren.

Some nights later, her teenage daughter Sveva, who was there alone, was visited by more lions. Alerted by two-way radio, her mother drove to the rescue. The lions vanished, but this was not the first time Kuki Gallmann was in danger of losing members of her family in this way.

There had been another night of lions, some years before. When the family jeep got stuck in the road after mud and flooding, it was abandoned. Gallmann, her mother and young son set out to walk home in the dusk with one of the family dogs.

Not far from home, the dog went uncharacteristically quiet, staying close to the small party. To break the tension, Gallmann got them all singing a marching song. They got home safely. In the morning, they found the tracks of two lions, which had followed just a few steps behind them all the way to the garden gate. That scene will feature in the film.

"In Africa, the mysterious always exists beside the sunny side of the country," says Gallmann, who has eluded death several times. "The dark side of Africa still remains in the rural areas." She is talking here about voodoo, which features in a true story called The Dance of Spiders.

Witch doctors and black magic - who's to say they don't have their own arcane powers? Certainly, the fear a "witch doctor" can engender can be as powerful as any supposed black magic. "Scared to death" is a common phrase, and the effects of fear on the physical well-being of a body can be dramatic.

The Dance of Spiders is the story of Julius, whom Gallmann helped send to college in Cambridge. When he returned home, he fell in love with a girl from another tribe, who was uncircumcised. Such a union between these enemy tribes, the Luo and Kikuyu, was seen to be impossible, especially by Julius's superstitious mother, who told them their children would be cursed.

One day he discovered his mother creeping around the flat he shared with his girlfriend. She was trying to hide a voodoo doll she had made of human hair and impaled with pins. At first he thought it was his girlfriend's hair and wondered how she had got it. But the hair did not belong to his girlfriend. It was his own. Julius committed suicide three months later.

"Traditions are still deeply rooted in Africa," says Gallmann, who has learned over the decades never to underestimate anything about the dark continent.

Night of the Lions, by Kuki Gallmann, is published by Viking at £15.99 in UK.