Night Flight (novel)

Night Flight , published as Vol de Nuit in 1931, was the second novel by French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It went on to become an international bestseller and a film based on it appeared in 1933. Its popularity, which only grew with the ideological conflicts of the 1930s – 1940s, was due to its master theme of sacrificing personal considerations to a cause in which one believes.

The book is based on Saint-Exupéry's experiences as an airmail pilot and as a director of the Aeroposta Argentina airline, based in Buenos Aires. The characters were inspired by the people Saint-Exupéry knew while working in South America. Notably, the character of Rivière was based on the airline’s operations director Didier Daurat. With an introduction by André Gide, the novel of only 23 short chapters was published by Éditions Gallimard in 1931 and was awarded the Prix Femina for that year. In 1932 it was translated into English by Stuart Gilbert as Night Flight and was made a Book of the Month Club choice in the United States. In the following year, Saint-Exupéry's friend Jacques Guerlain used the book’s title as the name for his scent Vol de Nuit. The bottle was a blend of glass and metal in Art Deco style with a propeller motif.

Also in 1933 Metro Goldwyn Mayer adapted the novel very loosely as a film, which brought the author to the attention of a far wider public. Much later there was a short television feature made by Desmond Davis, titled both Spirit of Adventure and Night Flight (1979). During the same decade, American composer Gardner Read was inspired by the novel to compose a short orchestral tone-poem, "Night Flight" (Opus 44, 1936-42). A contemporary musical adaptation was Luigi Dallapiccola’s opera, Volo di notte, begun in 1937 and first performed in 1940. In 2014 the Korean composer Hyukjin Shin (b.1976) wrote another response to the novel in a chamber piece for violin, clarinet, cello and piano, in this case trying to capture the pilot Fabien’s final vision as he flew above the clouds.

...
Wikipedia