Night flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - and a tragic poignancy
Night Flight , Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, with an introduction by André Gide Translated by Stuart Gilbert, Penguin Books, 1940 edition. This English translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Vol de Nuit came from a late friend's bookshelves. The Penguin edition with its distinctive orange-and-white cover, denoting works of fiction, is now 86 years old and the content very much of its time. Aviation was in its pioneering age and although the events described are tragic, the French writer, André Gide in his introduction writes "great though these risks still are, they are growing daily less, for each successive trip facilitates and improves the prospects of the next one." Sadly those diminishing risks were not realised as is apparent by another book from the same shelves—a book that survived an air crash. Back in 2001 my friend had ordered a title on the Geology of Ireland from a bookseller in Selkirk, Scotland. The book was on board an aircraft that crashe...