West with the Night
Author(s):
Beryl Markham
Label: North Point Press
Publisher(s):
North Point Press
Studio: North Point Press
Manufacturer: North Point Press
Binding: Paperback
List Price: $16.00
Our Price: $10.88
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Similar Items:
The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass
Wind, Sand and Stars
Out of Africa (Modern Library)
Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton
The Lives of Beryl Markham
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time
The Safari Companion: A Guide to Watching African Mammals Including Hoofed Mammals, Carnivores, and Primates
Out of Africa
Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller
Editorial Reviews
Product Description
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.
Amazon.com 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.
Customer Reviews
How I found this ...
I am not quite sure how I happened upon this book but i am glad I did. The writing is a beautiful portrait of Kenya in the early 20th centure. Written from the view of English settlers, Beryl Markham was quite a character. Rumor has it that she may not have penned the book herself. I would like to learn more.
Beautifully written account of life in East Africa
My grandparents went to East Africa in the 1920s. My grandfather, a Scotsman, was looking for gold, my grandmother, a South African was looking for romance. My mother was born in the year this book opens.
When I was a child my mother regaled me with stories of scorpions, leopards amd pythons, and this book rekindled my memories of childhood.
It is a well-written account of a wild child's life in Kenya, hunting with the local people, being hunted by the local animals, and seeing the tribes as they were before tourism took over.
The author seems to take everything in her stride, and nothing seems to bother her. A bull elephant intent on killing her, flying blind over the Med, engine problems over Newfoundland, nothing seems to faze her.
I wasn't surprised to see that this book flopped on its original release in 1942 - it was an every day account of life as it was then.
But in 2008, things are very different and this is a very good account of early settler life in Kenya, White hunters and early aviation. I was sorry when I finished it, and wished it had been much much longer.
West With the Night
An excellent book!
Ernest Hemingway wrote, "She writes rings around us!" and he wasn't just being nice!
A good story, well written; what more could you ask for?!
West with the Night
I read this book because someone suggested my family might have been related to Beryl Markham, which is not the case, but...
What a woman - this is a true account of one of the first bush pilots in Africa, Beryl Markham, who was the first pilot to fly westward across the Atlantic from England. Although there is some dispute whether she actually wrote this autobiographical account (some say that her paramour, who edited the book, actually wrote it - she never confirmed or denied it), the stories are true and fascinating, encouraging the reader to learn more about her. The writing style is wonderful and interesting - no wonder Hemingway loved it. You wouldn't know this book was first published so many years ago.
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.
PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT SOME OF THE CONTENT THAT WE MAKE AVAILABLE TO YOU THROUGH THIS APPLICATION COMES FROM AMAZON WEB SERVICES. ALL SUCH CONTENT IS PROVIDED TO YOU "AS IS." THIS CONTENT AND YOUR USE OF IT ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE AND/OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.
Powered by PNAmazon © 2003-2007 ttgapers.com
