British · b. 1902
Beryl Markham was a British-Kenyan aviator and author whose West with the Night — a memoir of her life in colonial Kenya and her solo transatlantic flight — Ernest Hemingway praised as the best book written by a woman.
Beryl Markham grew up in colonial Kenya, trained racehorses, learned to fly, and in 1936 became the first person to complete a solo transatlantic flight from east to west — the harder direction, against prevailing winds, from England to Nova Scotia. West with the Night (1942) is her account of that life: the childhood on a farm in British East Africa, the horse training, the years as a bush pilot carrying mail, passengers, and supplies to remote African outposts, and the transatlantic crossing that made her briefly famous.
Ernest Hemingway read the book and wrote to a friend: “She has written so well, and marvellously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer.” The prose is of unusual quality — precise, rhythmic, and alert to the physical world in ways that suggest a writer who learned to observe before she learned to write. Whether Markham wrote it herself or had substantial help from her then-husband Raoul Schumacher has been debated; the consensus is that whatever collaboration occurred, the voice and experiences are authentically hers.
The book was published in 1942, went largely unnoticed, and was rediscovered in 1983 when a new edition became a surprise bestseller. Markham’s life story — she was raised by an African father figure more than her own father, lived as a horse trainer and aviator in colonial Kenya, had three marriages and numerous affairs — is as extraordinary as her prose, and the book holds both together with remarkable compression.
by Beryl Markham
Beryl Markham's memoir of growing up in Kenya in the early twentieth century, training horses, becoming the first person to fly solo non-stop from England to North America west to east, and living a life that defied every category available to women of her era.
Check Price on Amazon (paid link)guide
Where to start with Beryl Markham — how to approach West with the Night, her essential memoir of Africa and aviation. A complete reading guide.
list
Beryl Markham's West with the Night — which Hemingway called the best thing he had read in years — combines aviation adventure, colonial Kenya, and prose of astonishing authority. These books share its qualities: the extraordinary life rendered in extraordinary prose.
Disclosure: Amazon links on this page are affiliate links. If you purchase through them we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.