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This contains three of his most noted works. Read them in order of publication: Night Flight, Wind, Sand and Stars, and Flight To Arras.
Night Flight
This fictional account is based upon the authors memoirs of his service with the South American-European mail service in the later 1930s and augmented in his memoir Wind, Sand and Stars (Chapters IV and V). The quality of his prose is equal to his other works. Experience all the hopes and fears of the pilots who fly the mail by night to Buenos Aires from Patagonia and across the Andes from Chile and Paraguay. Then there is the frustration of those on the ground who control and await these flights. Extraordinarily, the fate of one pilot turns is almost a premonition of that of the author several years later.
Wind, Sand and Stars
Witness the danger, excitement, adventures of a pioneer aviator interspersed with his philosophy of life and he recounts his experiences with the French Air Post Service in the early years of the twentieth century. Here are all of the wonders and dangers of early flight across the Pyrenees, into North Africa, and in South America over the Andes. This is written well and might be classed as poetic prose: unexpected from someone whose vocation is far removed from literature.
Flight to Arras
This is his final memoir, written before the collapse of France in World War II. Here, amid his poetic philosophy, are all the idiocies and uncertainties of war, the valor of the aircrews, and their blind adherence to the missionno matter how futile. The aircraft becomes an extension of the pilots bodyan external vital organneither exists without the other.
Night Flight
This fictional account is based upon the authors memoirs of his service with the South American-European mail service in the later 1930s and augmented in his memoir Wind, Sand and Stars (Chapters IV and V). The quality of his prose is equal to his other works. Experience all the hopes and fears of the pilots who fly the mail by night to Buenos Aires from Patagonia and across the Andes from Chile and Paraguay. Then there is the frustration of those on the ground who control and await these flights. Extraordinarily, the fate of one pilot turns is almost a premonition of that of the author several years later.
Wind, Sand and Stars
Witness the danger, excitement, adventures of a pioneer aviator interspersed with his philosophy of life and he recounts his experiences with the French Air Post Service in the early years of the twentieth century. Here are all of the wonders and dangers of early flight across the Pyrenees, into North Africa, and in South America over the Andes. This is written well and might be classed as poetic prose: unexpected from someone whose vocation is far removed from literature.
Flight to Arras
This is his final memoir, written before the collapse of France in World War II. Here, amid his poetic philosophy, are all the idiocies and uncertainties of war, the valor of the aircrews, and their blind adherence to the missionno matter how futile. The aircraft becomes an extension of the pilots bodyan external vital organneither exists without the other.
Author of The Little Prince, Saint-Exupery writes with grace and beauty. He blends adventure with reflection in a way few writers have...His book are play of light around a person who cared most of all for the community of humankind.
