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West with the Night
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 629.13092
EAN: 9780865471184
ISBN: 0865471185
Label: North Point Press
Manufacturer: North Point Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: January 01, 1982
Publisher: North Point Press
Studio: North Point Press
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Editorial Review:
One of the most beautifully crafted books I have ever read, with some of the most poetic prose passages I could imagine, such as the following, resonating with a stately and timeless quality so absent in our modern life: There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo. Born in England in 1902, Markham was taken by her father to East Africa in 1906. She spent her childhood playing with native Maruni children and apprenticing with her father as a trainer and breeder of racehorses. In the 1930s, she became an African bush pilot, and in September 1936, became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west.
West with the Night is the story of Beryl Markham--aviator, racehorse trainer, beauty--and her life in the Kenya of the 1920s and '30s.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Reads like fiction
I agree with Hemingway that this is a piece of high literature that reads like fiction and spreads itself before the reader like a well-produced film. It drove me to learn more about the author and her life.
Rating: - Far far better than I anticipated. Great writing.
Absolutely captivating personal account of times and places long gone. As a fan of "Heat of the Sun," this book was a treasure.
Rating: - West with the Night
As a child growing up with her father in Africa, Beryl Markham faced down lions and wild boar. As an adult she trained race horses before learning to fly airplanes and becoming a bush pilot. Eventually she became the first pilot, female or male, to fly west with the night and cross the Atlantic ocean solo from Europe to North America. Markham brings the African bush to life with stories of boar hunts and elephant hunts. Of horse races and airplane flights over desert terrain. She lived a courageous ... Read More
Rating: - More than a memoir
Much more than a memoir, Beryl Markham's work is a means of transport, not dissimilar to her beloved plane. It took me back to the Africa I lived in as a young bride, to its stark beauty, its dignified and desparate people, the language of its silences. Her tale of matter-of-fact mercies, and of cruelty equally unremarkable, is the stuff of life, as full of hope as of despair, for its millions of people. Her sensitivity instructs us in things as disparate as a young zebra's personal quirks, or the way ... Read More
Rating: - An amazing book, no matter who wrote it!
Fantastic! I don't care if Beryl Markham wrote this or not (it is rumored that her third husband, a Hollywood ghostwriter, wrote the book). Beryl Markham's story is fascinating: from growing up in East Africa on her father's horse farm, to training race horses, to her time in Africa as a pilot tracking wild game from the air ... all culminating in her historic solo flight across the Atlantic from east to west. This book brings the ultimate forms of praise from me: (1) I could not put it down; and (2) I ... Read More
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