![]() ![]() “Nungwe maybe dead and forgotten now,” the tale begins. The book opens with Markham searching for a beginning to her story and recalling a flight in her log books- Nairobi to Nungwe. She accompanied her parents as a young girl from England to Kenya, growing up on a farm in Njoro with her father after her mother returned to England. ![]() Markham lived in British East Africa at a time when Europeans were flocking to the continent for farming, hunting and a bit of adventure. ![]() Markham provides few details of her personal life in the book, but gives poetic logs, strung together on a tightly woven ribbon, of the highlights of her life beginning in Africa, flying across oceans and continents, and ending in her return to Africa. West with the Night is a beautifully detached account of an exciting life that most can only imagine. The book paints images of a childhood running through the farms and plains of Africa, hunting with indigenous people of the region, an independent young adulthood as a horse trainer and eventually taking to the skies, piloting planes and learning from other aviators with African clouds in their eyes. Reading Beryl Markham’s memoir West with the Night, I was swept up in a fantasy of a dream life in early 20th century Kenya. ![]()
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