A new edition of a great, underappreciated classic of our time Beryl Markham's West with the Night is a true classic, a book that deserves the same acclaim and readership as the work of her contemporaries Ernest Hemingway, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and Isak Dinesen.
If the first responsibility of a memoirist is to lead a life worth writing about, Markham succeeded beyond all measure.
Born Beryl Clutterbuck in the middle of England, she and her father moved to Kenya when she was a girl, and she grew up with a zebra for a pet; horses for friends; baboons, lions, and gazelles for neighbors.
She made money by scouting elephants from a tiny plane.
And she would spend most of the rest of her life in East Africa as an adventurer, a racehorse trainer, and an aviatrix--she became the first person to fly nonstop from Europe to America, the first woman to fly solo east to west across the Atlantic.
Hers was indisputably a life full of adventure and beauty.
And then there is the writing.
When Hemingway read Markham's book, he wrote to his editor, Maxwell Perkins: 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 as writers .
It is really a bloody wonderful book.
With a new introduction by Sara Wheeler--one of Markham's few legitimate literary heirs--West with the Night should once again take its place as one of the world's great adventure stories.
| Perkins | She has written so well and marvelously well that |
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North Point Press West with the night: a memoir, paperback/beryl markham
