| In Association With... |  |
|
|
| West With the Night |  | Author: Beryl Markham
Creator: Alexandra O'karma
Publisher: Recorded Books
Category: Book
List Price: $49.95
Buy Used: $20.00
You Save: $29.95 (60%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  119 reviews
Sales Rank: 5843401
Format: Unabridged
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Unabridged
ISBN: 9997622006
EAN: 9789997622006
ASIN: 9997622006
Publication Date: September 1987
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
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.
Product Description
A chronicle of Markham's growing up in Kenya, sharing hunting adventures with native tribes and her careers as race-horse trainer and aviatrix. 2 cassettes.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 114 more reviews...
 West with the Night July 22, 2008
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 June 27, 2008
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.
Far far better than I anticipated. Great writing. June 21, 2008
Absolutely captivating personal account of times and places long gone. As a fan of "Heat of the Sun," this book was a treasure.
West with the Night June 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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 life in a time when girls were only supposed to wear dresses and play with dolls and flying airplanes was a man's job. Highly inspirational to read!
There's so much to talk about in mother-daughter book clubs or any book club. How was Markham's life different from so many of the girls in her time? How would her life have been different if her mother was also in Africa raising her?
This book is beautifully written; I've read it three times and each reading I glean more and more from it. I highly recommend it for anyone in high school or older.
Pure Poetry June 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This forgotten volume is a beautifully written memoir of Markum's time in Africa in the early 1900s. The writing (some have questioned whether husband Raoul Schumacher was actually the author, or at least collaborator) is vividly descriptive and reads like lyric poetry. Hemingway wrote to a friend that "...she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer.....She can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers."
Consider this passage from an eloquent retelling of a safari hunt that left one man dead when a fatally wounded lion turned on its hunters as they snapped photographs: "Cremation is a smooth word that seeks to conceal the indelicate reality of a human body being baked in fire.....In mid-afternoon on the African veldt under a harsh and revealing sun, it is at best a euphemism. Still, since men cherish the paradox requiring that to insure immortality they must preserve what is most mortal about them, wood was gathered and a fire was built." The whole account, in just four pages, captures the tragedy of it all--animal and human.
Beryl Markum, the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, was a contemporary (and perhaps romantic rival) of Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen) author of the memoir Out of Africa.
I highly recommend the audio read by the late Kate Fleming (audio pseudonym: Anna Fields, one of the best audio readers ever and greatly missed).
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
