Wind, Sand and Stars (original 1939; edition 2002)

Ehhh. Starts off beautifully, but my interest waned; we never get much of a sense of the man in the cockpit, so to speak, never know why Saint-Exupery decided to become a pilot, his wife is mentioned once, and only in passing, and the section on the Spanish Civil War seriously should have been cut. It doesn't really hold together as a memoir. But the sentences are gorgeous, and the individual scenes, most of them, are well-drawn. ( )

One of my desert island books. Transcendent. Amazing. Delightful in every possible particular. Highly recommended. ( )

I absolutely adore The Little Prince and when I saw that Saint-Exupery was also a travel writer (though his books are also autobiographies), I jumped at the chance to read one of them. I picked Wind, Sand and Stars because it contains a few passages set in the desert, which served as inspiration for The Little Prince. I really enjoyed reading Saint-Exupery's writings, for the most part. I liked his storytelling abilities, how he made both the places he visited and the people he knew come alive.

I wanted to give this book five stars, but I found the last section, which was about war and Saint-Exupery's experiences on the front lines in Spain, to be a let down at the end of the novel. I was disappointed, because up until that point everything had been quite good. Of course, since it was war, the passages were darker, but that wasn't the problem. They just weren't as interesting. I'm not sure if it's because I don't like war stories, as it were, as much or what. But that was enough to knock the book down to four stars.

My favorites parts were when he talked about what it felt like to fly and the sections set in the desert. My personal favorite was the last part, in the desert, when he was trying to fly across Africa and crashed along with another man. They were stranded for several days and only just survived when a man (Saint-Exupery called him an Arab, though I do not know which nationality the man was) rescued them. The way Saint-Exupery writes about his slow descent into madness (due to lack of water) along with the efforts of Saint-Exupery and the other man (his name and position escape me, though I want to say he was a co-pilot/mechanic) to fix their plane and then try to survive were quite vivid.

In spite of ending on such a downer, with the war, I really liked this book and I may have to look for his others. ( )

This is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read.

You may perhaps be familiar with Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s work through the book The Little Prince which has become a classic for children and adults alike. This book reveals some of the inspiration Saint Exupéry drew upon.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry was a pioneering French pilot opening up the routes between France and Africa at a time when such journeys taxed the capabilities of aircraft and pilots to their limits. In this book he blends a collection of wonderful tales of the period with insights from his life, writing with the hand of a poet from the heart of a philosopher.

The book, written some seventy years ago, is clearly placed in its time whilst also being timeless, blending images of times past with lessons and insights that are immensely relevant to today. It spans his early adventures pioneering the mail service to Africa and onto the opening up of South America, through to his involvement in the Spanish Civil War, each with their life threatening dangers.

The experiences are wonderfully described but it is his reaction to them, the response of his heart and soul that give the book the power to move the reader’s soul.

In a book that has much description of life and survival in the desert, my favourite chapter is titled ‘Oasis’. Saint Exupéry leads the reader not into the oasis amidst the sand, but the oases that fill all of our lives, beautifully describing the experience of being taken into a family home in Paraguay.

I often promise to return to re-read books, but this book and this chapter in particular has been read several times over.

One of my favourite quotations of his is ‘.
“Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young”
Sadly Antoine de Saint Exupéry was killed whilst flying in 1944 at the age of 44.

I commend this book to you so you may see the poet he was and find the poet you are. ( )

"I had thought myself lost, had touched the very bottom of despair; and then, when the spirit of renunciation had filled me, I had known peace."(p 170)
Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a man of action who seemed to have half a dozen different careers at once: he was a prize-winning novelist and professional mail pilot, an airborne adventurer and a war correspondent, a commercial test pilot and the author of a popular children's book. But whatever else he was doing, he never stopped writing. In this memoir he describes his experiences as a pilot in terms so poetic as to take your breath away. Few pilots perhaps have seen a cloud and thought of it as "a scarf of filings scraped off the surface of the earth and borne out to sea by the wind." The opening chapters form a sort of philosophical meditation on the nature of the life as a pilot as can be gleaned from the chapter titles: "The Craft", "The Men", "The Tool". There are moments and vignettes described as only someone who lived the life and imagined the experience could achieve.
Published on the eve of World War II, the book sold out quickly on both sides of the ocean, although the form baffled readers in each language. Three months after publication, the Academie Francaise awarded it the Grand Prix du Roman, naming it the best novel of 1939. American booksellers, for their part, chose Wind, Sand and Stars as "the best non-fiction book of the year." However you classify it this book is Saint-Exupery's paean to the spirit of man, to the goals that unite us, and to the optimism that was his stock in trade. Whether you agree with him or not, the book remains one that buoys the spirit and calms the heart. ( )