West with the Night

Beryl Markham

gush 2012 · Open Road Media

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The classic memoir of Africa, aviation, and adventure—the inspiration for Paula McLain’s Circling the Sun and “a bloody wonderful book” (Ernest Hemingway).

 Beryl Markham’s life story is a true epic. Not only did she set records and break barriers as a pilot, she shattered societal expectations, threw herself into torrid love affairs, survived desperate crash landings—and chronicled everything. A contemporary of Karen Blixen (better known as Isak Dinesen, the author of Out of Africa), Markham left an enduring memoir that soars with astounding candor and shimmering insights.
 
A rebel from a young age, the British-born Markham was raised in Kenya’s unforgiving farmlands. She trained as a bush pilot at a time when most Africans had never seen a plane. In 1936, she accepted the ultimate challenge: to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean from east to west, a feat that fellow female aviator Amelia Earhart had completed in reverse just a few years before. Markham’s successes and her failures—and her deep, lifelong love of the “soul of Africa”—are all told here with wrenching honesty and agile wit.
 
Hailed as “one of the greatest adventure books of all time” by Newsweek and “the sort of book that makes you think human beings can do anything” by the New York Times, West with the Night remains a powerful testament to one of the iconic lives of the twentieth century.
 

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DIVBorn in 1902 in Ashwell, England, and raised in Kenya, Beryl Markham was a celebrated aviator and horse trainer whose memoir, West with the Night, remains a classic of the genre. When she was four, her family settled in Njoro, Kenya. Her mother soon returned to England, but Markham stayed, living in Kenya for the rest of her life. A noted maverick, she was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west and the first person to fly nonstop from England to North America. Her memoir earned early critical praise and, upon its reprinting in 1982, became a surprise bestseller. Markham died in 1986. /div