Beryl Markham's "West With The Night"

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If you are looking for a great book to read, one book to consider is Beryl Markham's classic tale of adventure, "West with the Night"; this book is nonfiction, but it is written with a fiction tone – conveying all of Beryl Markham's fantastic stories from her childhood and adulthood in Africa.

Probably the best endorsement of all for this book came from literary legend Ernest Hemingway; Hemingway, who was certainly not known for speaking well of his contemporaries, said of Beryl Markham's book, “she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer,” adding, "I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen, [but she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers."

Markham's childhood is especially interesting for the fact that she truly did grow up in Africa, as her father moved with her from England to British East Africa when she was only four years old; from that point onward, she grew up with Africa as her true home, experiencing the country in the way only a local could – and in fact, Africa became home to her to such an extent that when her father moved to Peru when she was 17, she opted to stay in her “home country” rather than leaving with him.

This book not only explores her childhood – regaling the reader with tales of adventure and misadventure – but it also takes us through her adulthood as a freelance pilot, flying over the great, vast wilderness of Africa, leading her to adventure after adventure, and bringing the reader alongside her.

For anyone who enjoys a pleasant, unpredictable read that is full of adventure and excitement, while also giving the reader information and knowledge, "West with the Night" is certainly a book worth picking up and devouring right away!