Was not my cup of tea. The story was very fragmented and therefore very hard to follow. Seems like there are several stories going on at the same time, but are not connected one to another. Even when I was done reading it, I still could not understand the idea of this book.

I'm not really sure what to rate this, since at times it was amazing and at other times it was really horrible. I'll give it a four stars, though, since it was a very interesting horrible when it wasn't good.

If I had been someone looking for a novel like Ernest K. Gann’s The High and the Mighty, I would be sorely disappointed. However, since I am reading the same author who wrote about a little prince stranded on a star, I know the book is to be about one who loves the skies in a different way. The novel is divided into three parts: In the brief Part One, readers encounter French pilot Jacques Bernis, who flies a mail plane on a route south to northern Africa and back, sometimes his clients not rece...

A melancholic work. I think it would have been much better if I could read the book in its original language. It is filled with flowery phrases that must be difficult to translate to Bahasa Indonesia. Too bad I know nothing of french. The book tells about a journey of a man who works as a pilot for a fench air postal service in africa. Seasoned with self-thoughts and roman, this book presents a pov of a man looking at his (short) journey in life and love, typical of Saint-Exupery. But sometimes

No Stars until a re-read. This is my first St-Exupery book (no, not even the Little Prince)Not at all what I expected.My answer to Adler's analytical reading question IV, "what problem, question is the author asking-answering?" is tentatively "Who were these men who flew the mail?" As others have noted, the book is a difficult (Satre like) read. The 2d to last telegram at end of the book connected some dots for me, at least tentatively. The book gives a glimpse into the soul of a man who flies t...

Southern Mail preceded Night Flight by only two years, yet the latter work was by far the better and more focused. The pilot in Southern Mail flies a mail plane from Toulouse through Spain and along the West Coast of Africa to Dakar before heading across the Atlantic to Buenos Aires.Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is more fixated on his pilot, Jacques Bernis, here than in Night Flight. There is as much about Bernis' adulterous relationship with his girlfriend Genevieve than there is on the flight. Ther...

Although only 150 pages this is not an easy read. The opening was difficult to understand and it was only as Genevieve comes into Bernis life that we have a recognisable story thread. It takes time to understand how the story moves - the form. The quality of this short novel is actually in the dreamy shifting of passage to passage , from point of view to point of view in defiance of conventional writing, and the dreamy romantic language of love, youth and idealism. The writing really is beautifu...

There are times when one reads a book for the sheer joy of the words and how they flow together to form sentences and how the sentences rush to form a river of words which carry us to the source.Southern Mail is such a book and even though the translation isn't perfect, I have to remember this was written and translated in 1933 when English language readers were much more literate than they are today and the meaning of words could be reasoned out. This was a time, in a part of the world where th...

I don't think I completely understand the book, for I found the narratives changes from first person to third person frequently, and some of the descriptions and analogies difficult to understand. But it is still a good book, illustrates a young, devoting and sensitive pilot's life, love and fly. Enjoyed reading the book accompanied by Dustin O'Halloran's Opus 20.

"One day, Bernis, you made me this confession: 'I’ve liked a life I’ve never really understood, a life that wasn’t completely faithful. I don’t even know what I really wanted; it was a faint yearning…'One day, Bernis, you said: 'What I surmised lay behind everything. I had the impression that with a little effort I would understand, I would finally know the truth and carry it away. Now I am leaving, troubled by the presence of a friend I was unable to bring to the surface…'Somewhere, I sense, a

I must go back and tell of those past two months, for otherwise what would be left of them? When the last faint ripples of the happenings I am going to describe will eventually have spent their force in ever-widening circles and, like waters of a lake, have closed again over the lives they have blurred, when the emotions they aroused in me, at first so poignant, then less poignant, and finally almost tender, have been dulled, then all will once again seem right with the world.*But for fear of di...

Courrier Sud = Southern Mail = Southern Carrier, Antoine de Saint-ExupérySouthern Carrier, is the first novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, published in 1929.Encouraged by the publication of his short story The Aviator, Saint-Exupéry followed up with this work based on his pioneering flights for the French airmail service.A structured novel, it has three sections, the shorter outer sections being set in the heat and daylight of the Sahara Desert, the long central section in France at night and in...

well, I was surprised to discover that this is a novel. I mean, I'd read a good 20 pages or so before I figured out it had an invented plot and invented characters, and the delay in discovery wasn't my fault (I mean, on account of my faulty French)--so much of the opening describes the daily (nightly) routine of the "Southern Mail" of the title that the narrator takes some time to get around to introducing the characters. The sad, sordid relationship in the middle of the book, the "meat" of the

An enchanting read of early flight over barbaric lands filled with mystery and possibility. Stories like this one need to be read in order for us to remember how far society has advanced, and to illuminate how far we still need to advance. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Knowing Saint Exupéry from his fantastic poetic and immortal Le Petit Prince, the book Courrier Sud, his first novel, was a beautiful journey into the earlier mind of this adventurous pilot. Written in the late 1920s, one can imagine the loneliness of long night flights over Northern Africa in noisy aircrafts, to deliver and pick up French Mail. A precocious mind, sensitive, dreamy and observant, he seamlessly weaved characters from contrasting worlds in an intriguing and profound story of loss

beautiful simple prose. a transporting read.

I read this as part of a French A-Level. I loved it then and I still love it now. I have read all his books.The book is gritty and evocative at the same time. It balances the hard demands of flying a small aircraft over desert, and the evocative nature of the desert, of the unending sky and a man's efforts to defy nature and fly.

Reasons why I read this book :1. Of course, because this is a de Saint-Exupery. I am quite fond of The Little Prince and Terre des Hommes, and eager to read another work of his.2. Sapardi Djoko Damono wrote introduction to this book.3. A professor translated this book. Never heard of her name before, or her works, but she should has the academic credibility to translate this well.4. Have I told you that I always have a soft spot for pretty book covers? No? There, I said it.But...my, oh my. How t...

2.5* I give the extra 0.5 to make a 3 star solely because of the gorgeous writing style of de Saint-Exupéry.

The prose has moments of poetic insight. The plot is fairly simple and the French vocabulary isn't too demanding, aside from various aeronautic terms. And it's short. On the other hand, the narrative structure is confused by vague pronouns, a mysterious "we" that is never defined, and disorienting jumps in context and point of view. Published in 1929, it was the first major work by the author of "le petit prince." You will find similar themes between the two works, for example airplanes, the des...