He recounts his crash in the Sahara, his days of walking without water and his remarkable survival.

He does speak of the dangers, the risks from bandits and ‘dissidents’ when landing in a tiny desert outpost, the struggles to keep these basic machines in the air when faced with buffeting winds or flying through dense cloud for hours, without one reassuring sight of a landmark. But in Land of Men, Saint-Exupéry doesn’t just relate tales of derring-do in the clouds, the storms, or what it is like to be lost over thousands of featureless miles above sea or sand. It was extremely hazardous, for the aeroplanes were unreliable, precise meteorology was in its infancy, radio communication and maps were relatively primitive and new, long routes were being pioneered over dangerous terrain of all kinds – across the Sahara, over the Andes, even just across the Mediterranean.

These courageous pilots took their life in their hands each time they set out to deliver the mail. First published in 1939, it documents Saint-Exupéry’s life as a pilot in the pioneering days of long-distance flying and in particular his experiences as a pilot transporting mail across countries, across continents. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is known universally for the gentle charm of Le Petit Prince, but it is this book, Land of Men – known originally in English as Wind, Sand and Stars – which is his masterpiece.

Wind sand and stars author