Wind, Sand, and Stars

Antoine De Saint-Exupéry’s memoir, Wind, Sand, and Stars, was first published in France in 1939, with an English translation appearing in the United States later that year. The book won the Grand Prize for Fiction from the French Academy and the National Book Award. It was also included on lists of the best adventure books of all time compiled by National Geographic ADVENTURE and Outside magazine.

Antoine, a new student pilot, is taking classes in meteorology. The plan is for him and his fellow pilots to become mail delivery pilots making the run from France to West Africa. This is a particularly dangerous route because the pilots have to fly at a low altitude, dodging around obstacles on the ground. After he begins flying, Antoine has several exhilarating and frightening experiences. The most notable is the night he and his flying partner are caught in a thick fog, wandering lost until a radio tower on the ground contacts them.

Antoine describes two remarkable men with whom he flew. The first is Mermoz, an innovative pilot who teaches Antoine how to land on unlit airstrips. Once, he plunged his plane off a cliff and used the acceleration of the fall to start its engines so it could fly. Antoine admires Mermoz for his mastery of flying and his fearlessness. The other man is Guillaumet, a highly competent and meticulous pilot. On one flight, Guillaumet crashes in the Andes. He survives in the wilderness for nearly a week, managing to hike out despite his injuries.



Next, Antoine discusses the airplane as an invention. He talks about the simple lines of the plane that make them more aerodynamic and invisible to people on the ground. He believes airplanes are too new and people do not yet have the language to talk about them. He thinks that once people develop the language to speak about air travel, air travel will fully enter into their culture.

One day, while flying over the Andes, Antoine’s plane is caught in a typhoon. His plane is forced out to sea by the high winds, and he is unable to get back to land. After several long hours of fighting the wind, his hands go numb. Finally, he flies along the coast and takes shelter on the opposite side of a mountain range. When he finally lands, he has to wait for help to arrive because he is too exhausted to leave his plane. As he ends the story, he apologizes to the reader for not making it more dramatic and emotional.

The perspective afforded by flying is a unique one in Antoine’s opinion. He thinks that being able to see the earth from above has led to the loss of innocence since it allows people to see all the different features of a landscape from the beautiful to the ugly. However, he feels that he has not learned as much from flying as he has through his interactions with other people since flying can be lonely and isolated.



One evening, Antoine spends the night with a family in Paraguay who lives on an oasis. The experience makes a great impression on him. Two young daughters who live on the oasis know a number of secret passages around the house and hiding places in the oasis. The girls charm Antoine with stories about how they can control animals. Reflecting back several years later, Antoine wonders what became of those girls. Thinking that they may be married, he wonders if they still have their imaginations.

On another occasion, Antoine is flying in a convoy over the Sahara desert with Guillaumet when they realize that the plane is too heavy. Guillaumet tells them to leave him behind and to pick him up after they drop off their load. The Sahara has a profound effect on Antoine. The French government makes arrangements to take some of the Moorish chiefs to Europe to show them around. The chiefs are not impressed by the technology of the Europeans, but they are impressed by the greenery and trees. The local people treat Antoine coolly until he uses his wages to buy shoes for poor and orphan children.

As the book ends, the narrative flashes back to the day after Antoine’s first training flight. As he rides home on the bus with bureaucrats and other people whom he sees as having boring jobs, he thinks about how they look tired and devoid of emotion. Among the crowd, he spots a small child who seems to Antoine to still be full of promise. He wonders if the child will grow up to be another bored face in the crowd or if he will maintain the capacity for dreams.