Winner of the Femina Literary Prize in 1931
The Little Prince's author, Saint-Exupéry's second masterpiece, Night Flight
Includes a preface by Nobel Prize winner André Gide

A new heroic epic for the 21st century, written by the true adventurer Saint-Exupéry!
The nobility of humanity in the face of limitations, adversity, and tragedy

Saint-Exupéry's second novel, Night Flight, published in 1931, received immediate acclaim from readers and critics, winning the Prix Femina that year.
This work especially shined with the praise of the great writer André Gide, and was soon translated all over the world and made into a film in 1933.

Saint-Exupéry enlisted in the Air Force in 1920, received pilot training, and joined the French airline in 1926.
In 1929, he participated in the development of Argentina's night route and created this work based on his experiences at the time.
The 1920s, the period when commercial aviation was born, saw the development of transportation and communication, urbanization and development, and the rapid expansion of image distribution through printing and film.
The development of such technologies changed individual perception, and civilization was open to modernization.
As ideas of transcendence and overcoming began to materialize in all areas of life, traditional values ​​were overturned on a social level, and individuals began to attempt to overcome the self through action.
The self-transcendence and overcoming that appear in the two characters Fabien and Rivière in Night Flight are by no means unrelated to these social changes.
Saint-Exupéry created the character Rivière in this work based on Didier Dorat, his boss while working in Toulouse.
He provides great inspiration and enlightenment through Riviere, who has a strong sense of responsibility and mission, and the pilots who do not spare their own bodies and take on missions.


European writers, suffering from the aftermath of World War I, turned their attention to history and society and began to seriously reflect on human problems.
Rather than being absorbed by existing ideologies, they pondered fundamental human problems and sought to express them through 'action.'
So they devoted themselves to 'writing in which life becomes a work of art.'
'Actionist literature' represented by André Malraux, Saint-Exupéry, and Monterlin had a great influence on the existentialist literature that emerged later.
Before writing, they first took on adventurous actions and turned them into works of art, sometimes even facing death. They ensured that these adventures were not merely individual heroic tales, but continued to demonstrate the great power of humanity.
At the end of Night Flight, when Rivière learns that Payen will not be able to return to the airport, he does not despair and orders the plane to Europe to take off.
And he vows to fight again against the adversity that has befallen him from where he was.
His actions can be considered a model of activist literature that pioneers human destiny without yielding to adversity.
Let's meet the masterpiece "Night Flight" that contains Saint-Exupéry's free spirit that wants to fly, with the original first edition cover design of The Story.

He thought again as his heart began to weaken.
'To be loved, all you need is compassion.
But I have little sympathy or I hide it.
And yet, I desperately long to be surrounded by friendship and human kindness.
Doctors also derive such friendship and gentleness from their profession.
But what I have to take care of are the cases.
We need to train people to deal with incidents.'
--- p.75

“The good of the whole is achieved by the combined interests of each individual.
But nothing else justifies it.”
After a while, Riviere answered him.
“But even though human life cannot be valued, we always act as if there is something more valuable than human life.
But what is that?

--- p.97