This book is a love song to the early aviators of the 20th century. If you have a love of aviation and the early days of air travel, set alongside a wild and sometimes dangerous ride across the continents, then you’ll love this book.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery is chasing his dream of becoming a pilot. He is hampered by a lack of money and a girlfriend who doesn’t approve. His determination wins through and, along with fellow aviators, he becomes instrumental in pioneering new air routes across the world. Historians will also love the development of the airmail postal service which ran alongside the growth of the aviation world.
While chasing his wild and reckless dreams Antoine nurses a broken heart and also a desire to write poetry. Along the way we discover the beginnings of a small story he writes that will become a worldwide success, The Little Prince.
A beautifully written novel, The Prince of the Skies reads like a rollicking, edge of your seat plane trip! Various threads are explored and developed before coming together. The individual characters are vividly described, and the reader clearly feels the strength of the friendships between the aviators. The scenery of continental Europe, North Africa and South America is beautifully detailed and evocatively described.
This is not a small read, but encompasses so much in its pages. History lovers, aviation lovers and literature lovers will find a lot in this book, as will lovers of the children’s book, The Little Prince.
Reviewed by Kathryn Eyre
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Antonio Iturbe was born in 1967 and grew up in the dock-side neighbourhood of Barceloneta, in Barcelona. He studied Information Sciences at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and over the past fifteen years has worked as a cultural journalist.
In 2005, he made his debut as a novelist with the comic novel Rectos torcidos and has written for children with the series Los Casos del Inspector Cito, a collection of the stories he used to read to his son at bedtime. He is the author of the international bestseller The Librarian of Auschwitz and The Prince of the Skies.
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