Night Flight

"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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ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY, the "Winged Poet," was born in Lyon, France, in 1900. He took his first flight at the age of eleven, and became a pilot at twenty-six. He was a pioneer of commercial aviation and flew in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. His writings include The Little Prince, Wind, Sand and Stars, Night Flight, Southern Mail, and Airman's Odyssey. In 1944, while serving with a French air squadron, he disappeared during a flight over the Mediterranean.