Night Flight

Night Flight is a novel about the pilots who flew night mail planes in the early days of commercial aviation. Their routes ran from Patagonia, Chile and Paraguay to Argentina, and the book follows the men who risked these flights in the dark.

Its author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, was a French writer and a pilot who flew airmail routes himself, which gives the book its close sense of flying as a daily working life. He is also the author of The Little Prince. The story centres on Rivière, the stern director of the airline, and on the pilots whose flights he oversees.

This edition carries a preface by André Gide and is translated by Stuart Gilbert.