Random Things Tours: The Prince of the Skies by Antonio Iturbe (translated by Lilit Žekulin Thwaites)

 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry will be remembered in the history of literature as the writer of The Little Prince, but what else do we know about him? The Prince of the Skies by the bestseller Spanish author Antonio Iturbe, translated from Spanish by Lilit Žekulin Thwaites offers a different perspective into his life, both from the personal and professional point of view.

´But I´m not a celebrity, I´m a pilot´.

Indeed, Saint-Exupéry was a pilot, first and foremost. His aristocratic family - the ´de´ from his name was genuine and he spent his childhood in a castle - discouraged such endeavours, but his love for the freedom allowed by the skies was stronger than anything. Even stronger than love. At the time when he started his training, at the beginning of the 20th century, being a pilot was not as fancy as it turned to be just a couple of decades later, when royalties like the Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip, the Shah of Iran or the King of Jordan added piloting among their regular passions. 

The historical reconstruction of the life of Saint-Exupéry touches upon other famous French pilots, like Mermoz, who also died in mission. It is the life of pilots and their unique life encounters who are very beautifully presented in this book. ´Mermoz feels powerful. He and the plane vibrate in unison as they were one and the some. His euphoria is extraordinary: He shouts, he laughs, he shievers´. I am very passionate about everything airplanes and especially pilots, but I rarely have the chance to read a book where pilots do exist as unique characters, sharing their love and passion. Being a pilot, is more than a job, it is a vocation, like that of a writer´s. 

The writing flows beautifully and is catchy. The characters are giving a voice and assigned a personality, that may be or not fully correspond to the real historical characters. However, the real characters themselves lost their ´reality´ through times, as they remain in the memory as reflections of others, subjective projections of subjective interpretations of person and literary works. 

I may be over careful with such literary renditions, but at least the episodes of pilot lives do sound inspiring enough to make the reading entincing. Maybe it will encourage more pilot stories and novels, one of the most under represented category in the literary realm nowadays.

In 1944, Saint-Exupéry´s airplane never returned to the base at Bastia, Corsica. His body will never be found. 

Rating: 3.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour, but the opinions are, as usual, my own