West with the Night

by Beryl Markham

book data

1,541 ratings, 4.18 average rating, 350 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		46%
4		32%
3		16%
2		3%
1		1%

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published

January 1st 1983 (first published 1920) by North Point Press

binding

Paperback, 293 pages

isbn

0865471185 (isbn13: 9780865471184)

description

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, resona...more

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07/12/07

Ian rated it:

This letter from Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins in 1942 sums up the book better than I ever could:

"Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatev...more

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1 comment

02/05/08

Elizabeth rated it:

bookshelves: africa, autobiographical

Read in May, 2008

Reading Markham is like a breath of fresh air. The world of training horses, Africa and airplanes is so deliciously foreign to me, I could have read 500 more pages. I found the writer to be undeniably feminine yet no-nonsense.

I would recommend this book to all my free spirited friends.

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02/16/08

Kenny rated it:

bookshelves: biography

Read in February, 2008

recommends it for: everyone

As a pilot and a traveler to Africa myself, I read this book with interest. I was prepared for an exciting travelogue concerning subjects with which I had some commerce. What I was not prepared for was the prose, which flowed like a great river: powerful, subtle, perfectly apt, and remarkably unselfconscious, to wit:

"Africa is never the same to anyone who leaves it and returns again. It is not a land of change, but it is a land of moods and its moods are numberless. It is not fi...more As a pilot and a traveler to Africa myself, I read this book with interest. I was prepared for an exciting travelogue concerning subjects with which I had some commerce. What I was not prepared for was the prose, which flowed like a great river: powerful, subtle, perfectly apt, and remarkably unselfconscious, to wit:

"Africa is never the same to anyone who leaves it and returns again. It is not a land of change, but it is a land of moods and its moods are numberless. It is not fickle, but because it has mothered not only men, but races, and cradled not only cities, but civilizations -- and seen them die, and see new ones born again -- Africa can be dispassionate, indifferent, warm, or cynical, replete with the weariness of too much wisdom.

"Today Africa may seem to be that ever-promised land, almost achieved; but tomorrow it may be a dark land again, drawn into itself, contemptuous, and impatient with the futility of eager men who have scrambled over it since the experiment of Eden. In the family of continents, Africa is the silent, booding sister, courted for centuries by knight-errant empires -- rejecting them one by one and severally, because she is too sage and a little bored with the importunity of it all.

"Imperious Carthage must have once looked upon Africa as its own province, its future empire, and the sons of the Romans who destroyed that hope, and are today no longer Romans, have retreated with a step rather less firm than Caesar's over routes that knew the rumble of calvary long before Christ.

"All nations lay claim to Africa, but none has wholly possessed her yet. In time she will be taken, yielding... to integrity equal to her own and to wisdom capable of understanding her wisdom and of discerning between wealth and fulfillment. Africa is less a wilderness than a repository of primary and fundamental values, and less a barbaric land than an unfamiliary voice. Barbarism, however bright its trappings, is still alien to her heart."

To which I add my own feeble praise: read "West with the Night." You will never be the same.(less)

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09/23/07

eleanor rated it:

Read in January, 2005

recommends it for: adventerous souls, seekers of beauty, readers of all stripes

how is this book such a sleeper?
truly one of the best reads: beautiful, insightful, inspiring, moving... all that you could hope for from a memoir.
highly recommended.
Ernest Hemmingway, the author's friend and admirer, had this to say: "Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. As it is, she has written so well,...more

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08/15/07

Elizabeth rated it:

bookshelves: people-i-wish-i-knew, strange-faces-far-away-places, worth-reading

Read in October, 2007

The following passage is an example of why I loved this book.

A messenger came from the farm with a story to tell. It was not a story that meant much as stories went in those days. It was about how the war progressed in German East Africa and about a tall young man who was killed in it.

I suppose he was no taller than most who were killed there and no better. It was an ordinary story, but Kibii and I, who knew him well, thought there was no story like it, or one as sad...more

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03/20/08

Ebookwormy rated it:

bookshelves: 2-enjoyed, 3-caution, carp-500, world--africa

Read in November, 2007

This book was a good read, and a good companion to Out of Africa. However, two things struck me as strange with this work. #1 I felt much as I did with Out of Africa that the author really wasn't telling me the entire story, and #2, I kept having to remind myself that the main character was a woman as, while eloquently written, it didn't seem I was reading a feminine perspective.

So.... as I did with Out of Africa, I checked out a biography and (thankfully) got a good one, Errol Trze...more

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03/20/09

Jodi rated it:

bookshelves: 25-favorite-books, africa, biographies-and-memoirs

Read in January, 1985

It has been years since I read this book, but I remember absolutely adoring it at the time. A lot of that was the energetic writing style, along with the fact of having a strong female character in the book that wasn't easily intimidated.

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01/10/09

Stephen rated it:

Read in August, 2008

“As the herd [impala, wildebeest, zebra:] moved it became a carpet of rust-brown and grey and dull red. It was not like a herd of cattle or of sheep because it was wild, and it carried with it the stamp of wilderness and the freedom of a land still more a possession of Nature than of men. To see ten thousand animals untamed and not branded with the symbols of human commerce is like scaling an unconquered mountain for the first time, or like finding a forest without roads or footpaths, or the b...more

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12/03/08

Eric_W rated it:

(review of isbn 0786178906)

Beryl Markham was an extraordinary lady. She could train race horses to perfection, track lions and elephants, and speak Swahili with the natives. She was the first person to fly the Atlantic solo westbound. She was also an extraordinary writer.
Her autobiography, West With The Night is one of the best books I have listened to in a long time. The cassette version is ably read by Julie Harris. Several of the passages were so striking that we listened to them more than once. I particularl...more

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06/04/09

Tim rated it:

Read in May, 2009

Published originally in 1942, this remarkable memoir of a young English woman naturalized to worlds not hers tells a tale worth rereading. Markham's father brought her as a young child to a farm near Nairobi where he came to raise and race horses. This great love he shared with his daughter who imbibed the breeding of thoroughbreds amid the untamed and often untouched terroritories at her doorstep just at the edge of Western civilization in East Africa. The child's native independence carried ...more

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06/15/09

Mike rated it:

Read in June, 2009

recommends it for: impala, wildebeest, or zebra

This 1942 memoir recounts the author's adventures growing up in British East Africa — she was attacked by a Lion! — she carried a spear and hunted with the natives! — as well as tales from her later careers in colonial Africa as a horse trainer and then bush pilot. However impressive it is that she, a woman, carried on such extraordinary adventures, our narrator forges her identity from the residue of her actions and not the accident of her birth.

For Markham Africa is primal an...more

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2 comments

12/31/08

Susan rated it:

Read in December, 2008

Like the man who “rediscovered” this memoir and was instrumental in having it republished in 1983, I was impressed with the quotation by Hemingway on the cover to the effect that she “can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers”. There’s a breathless quality to the writing: there are delightful and original figures of speech and there’s wisdom gained from a childhood where mentors are as much the elders of the African tribes she grows up with as that of her own...more Like the man who “rediscovered” this memoir and was instrumental in having it republished in 1983, I was impressed with the quotation by Hemingway on the cover to the effect that she “can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers”. There’s a breathless quality to the writing: there are delightful and original figures of speech and there’s wisdom gained from a childhood where mentors are as much the elders of the African tribes she grows up with as that of her own father.

"A herd of elephant, as seen from a plane, has a quality of an hallucination. The proportions are wrong—they are like those of a child’s drawing of a field mouse in which the whole landscape, complete with barns and windmills, is dwarfed beneath the whiskers of the mighty rodent who looks both able and willing to devour everything, including the thumb-tack that holds the work against the schoolroom wall."

"Safaris come and safaris go, but Makula goes on forever. I suspect at times that he is one of the wisest men I have known—so wise that, realizing the scarcity of wisdom, he has never cast a scrap of it away, though I still remember a remark he made to an overzealous newcomer to his profession: ‘White men pay for danger—we poor ones cannot afford it. Find your elephant and then vanish, so that you can live to find another.’"

Markham grew up on a coffee farm in British East Africa (later Kenya) where her father also kept horses, as gradually training race horses captured his [and her:] interest full time. There was no mother (you have to read elsewhere to discover that her mother and elder sibling left Africa early on and returned to Britain). Her playmates were Africans and so were her mentors. One child she played with ended up her principal servant and companion in adult hood—and called her “Memsahib”. Her childhood influences were probably more African than British. When she was nearly 18, her father’s farm failed and he went to try his luck in Peru. She decided to stay and became a successful horse trainer herself until she met Tom Black who inspired her to learn to fly, though her eventual inspiration to take up flying seriously was the death of hunter and flyer Denys Finch Hatton in his plane. By the mid-thirties, she was flying passengers and the mail, rescuing the injured and taking them to safety. Eventually, with Baron Blixen (husband of Karen—Isak Dinesen) she joined the “big white hunters” on safaris, scouting for elephant by plane, though to her credit, even then she hated to see the elephants killed. She never mentions husbands, lovers or child. Nor does she mention Karen Blixen. Only her love for Africa and her work with horses and with planes.
Once I finished the book—which I enjoyed very much—I looked up Beryl Markham on the net, primarily because I was interested in her life and in the information she left out (what happened to her mother… the men in her life…) and discovered there is at least one biographer who says she didn’t write it, but that it was written by her third husband, Raoul Schumacher. Her other biographer stoutly denies the charge.
I can’t arbitrate that controversy, but I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Beryl Markham lived until 1986 in Kenya; she’s been living in obscurity and near poverty until the revival of the book brought her some notice and some money.

(less)

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04/23/09

Joyce rated it:

bookshelves: memoir

Read in January, 2000

This book was published in 1942. The author was born in 1902 in England and her father took her to Africa in 1906. This book was amazing in the way it was written. Just a sample from page 45...."There is no twilight in East Africa. Night tramps on the heels of Day with little gallantry and takes the place she lately held, in severe and humorless silence." WOW. The author, Beryl Markham was raised among Murani children of East Africa. She learned her father's trade, breeding horses, bu...more

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03/01/09

Book Cellar rated it:

bookshelves: laura-s-picks

Although I enjoy Antoine de St. Exupery, nature writing, and books about daring female adventurers who--at nearly every turn--challenge societal expectations and perceptions of what is possible, Beryl Markham's West With the Night somehow flew below my radar. Until recently.

Inspired by St. Expuery (and, a few critics suspect, co-authored or perhaps edited by him), this riveting memoir chronicles Markham's adventures as a bush pilot in Africa in the early 20th century. In graceful la...more

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01/17/09

Generic rated it:

bookshelves: africa, biography-memoir, four-star-nonfiction, history, nonfiction

Read in January, 2009

The order of some of the chapters is somewhat puzzling. I can only guess that she chose what she considered the most memorable events/periods in her life and wrote a chapter about each.
Some of the chapters were way more exciting than others. But overall the writing is quite impressive, considering she wasn't a professional writer. Things were so different in the time she wrote about! Everything was so new----automobiles, airplanes, telephones.

Beryl Markham grew up in Brit...more

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01/11/09

Kathleen added it

bookshelves: 2007-audio-books, 2007-nonfiction

Read in May, 2007

West with the Night, by Beryl Markham. A.
Narrated by Anna Fields, produced by Blackstone audio, downloaded from audible.com.

Beryl Markham, the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, describes her childhood on a farm in Kenya, her apprenticeship as a
horse trainer, and her later career as a pioneer aviator who piloted passengers and supplies in a small plane to remote corners of Africa. We get a wonderful picture of Africa as it existed in the 193...more

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04/28/09

Ali rated it:

Read in May, 2009

This really is a lovely book. The writing is excellent, who would have thought that a 1930's horse trainer and aviator could write so beautifully. The descriptions of Africa and flying are affectionate and vivid, and make this a joy of a read. Beryl Markham - friend of Denys Finch Hatton and Baron Blixen (think out of Africa) is someone who lived a full and remarkable life - only a small part of which is written about in this book - and who I now want to read more about. Beryl Markham's life i...more

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01/16/09

Betsy rated it:

Read in January, 2007

I got this book at a library sale for $1.00. I had read an excerpt in a literary book, and was impressed by it, so was happy to find the book. I loved the book - it transports you back to a time and place in Africa that was less troubled, more pure, before even World War I. You feel like you're right there, living in the "present", enjoying the very unique life of this young girl, and later on as she grows into adulthood. Beautifully poetic and yet very realistic writing - she doesn...more

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09/05/07

Devon rated it:

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: NO ONE!

this has got to be the most boring book i've ever read! it is kind of like an autobiography that is in the weirdest order and makes no sense at all. For the most part she talks about how she flew planes and her childhood in Africa.

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02/27/09

Betsy rated it:

Read in March, 2009

First of all, I don't give a damn about authorship. Why would someone else write something so well done and never get any credit for it. Perhaps Beryl had some coaching, but these are unquestionably her stories and they're terrific. I was most drawn in by her first stories about hunting wild boar and close encounters with lions. The elephant safari hunts had me grinding my teeth - different time and perspective, I guess. I found it interesting that Beryl never delved much into family or her ...more

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