Night Flight: New Translation (Alma Classics): Antoine Saint-Exupéry - Softcover

Antoine De Saint-Exupery; Translated By David Carter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847495893 ISBN 13: 9781847495891

Publisher: Alma Classics, 2016

Synopsis

Under the pressure of his boss, the intransigent Riviere, the airmail pilot Fabien attempts a perilous flight during a heavy night-time thunderstorm in Argentina. As conditions get worse and the radio communication with Fabien becomes increasingly difficult, Riviere begins to question his uncompromising methods, and his distress turns to guilt when the pilot's wife comes to find him in search of answers.

Based on Saint-Exupery's own experiences as a commercial pilot, Night Flight is a haunting and lyrical examination of duty, destiny and the individual, as well as an authentic and tragic portrayal of the intrepid early days of human air travel.

Alma Classics is committed to make available the widest range of literature from around the globe. All the titles are provided with an extensive critical apparatus, extra reading material including a section of photographs and notes. The texts are based on the most authoritative edition (or collated from the most authoritative editions or manuscripts) and edited using a fresh, intelligent editorial approach. With an emphasis on the production, editorial and typographical values of a book, Alma Classics aspires to revitalize the whole experience of reading the classics.

About this title

Review:

What gives this book an authentic and inimitable flavour is the personal confrontation with a recurrent peril... Quite aside from its literary merits, which I much admire, this book is valuable as a document; and it is the unusual combination of these two qualities which makes Night Flight so exceptionally important. --Andre Gide

From the Back Cover:

"Now all grew luminous, his hands, his clothes, the wings, and Fabien thought that he was in a limbo of strange magic; for the light did not come down from the stars but welled up from below, from all that snowy whiteness." from Night Flight
No writer has equalled Saint-Exupery in describing the perilous and poetic experience of flying, in submission to what he calls "those elemental divinities--night, day, mountain, sea and storm." In this gripping, beautifully written novel, he tells about the brave men who pilot night mail planes from Patagonia, Chile, and Paraguay to Argentina in the early days of commerical aviation. They are impelled to perform their routine acts of heroism by a steely chief named Riviere, whose extraordinary character is revealed through the dramatic events of a single night.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944), best known as the author of The Little Prince, was also a pioneer aviator. In 1944 he flew his plane over the Mediterranean on a World War II reconnaissance mission from which he never returned.

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About this edition

• Publisher: Alma Classics
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1847495893
• ISBN 13: 9781847495891
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160