Customer Reviews

Wisdom of the Sands

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"The Wisdom of the Sands" is a collection of Saint-Exupery's very personal reflections published posthumously as a series of parables. The rhythm of his lonely, compassionate, and mystical voice in this work enraptured me. The work concludes with the most profound and moving essay on friendship that I have ever read, one that far transcends his well-known fable "The Little Prince." His reflections on loneliness will resonate with anyone who has struggled with not succumbing to despair, and who has instead found God and love and compassion at the far end of this struggle.

Saint-Exupery weaves his great love for the vast, lonely, and empty Saharan desert of his youth that he crossed many times in the 1920s pioneering airmail routes for Air France with personal reflections and understandings of the Biblical mysteries that transpired in this same corner of the earth thousands of years ago. He returned to the African desert in the last days of his life, where he was based as a P-38 reconnaisance pilot in a world that had turned ugly and that ultimately, I believe, broke his heart, based on the sad voice that resonates from these pages, one trying to make peace with the earth and with life before he dies.

This collection, along with Dag Hammarskjold's "Markings," are my two favorite books, and both are very similar in nature though distinguished by their authors' personal voices and souls and writing style. Both document the spiritual journeys of two lonely European men in this century in a very personal way. Saint-Exupery's soulful reflections on the nature of love, friendship, loneliness, community, and duty are words I turn to again and again and that have grown with me through the years and acquired new meaning as I have matured.

This is an inspiring, life changing book for all wanna-be leaders. Like Pascal's pensées, it is a collection of thoughts slowly matured through Saint-Exupery's extraordinary life. The English translation has 123 selected thoughts, the French (more redundant version) has 219. The main character of the book is a king who governs the people of a city in the Sahara desert. He rules harshly (by today's diluted democratic standards) but in sincere and deep love for his people. His sense of duty is a model to all leaders. There is no story line as in the Little Prince story. The thoughts are profound and fertile. You will find yourself constantly using a highlighter, as do people reading the Bible. Some thoughts may even permanently change the way you view things. Like waves hammering the rocky shore, they are constantly rephrased, rebuilt around different images, repeatedly knocking you out of your comfort zone - and forcing you to reconsider what you have always found acceptable (read St-Ex's views on liberty). Saint-Exupery celebrates labour, movement, force in motion, regenerative and creative struggles. Like Pascal, he harshly critiques"l'esprit de divertissement", this anaesthetic leisure which leads to death. My only regret is that the English version of the book does not include an index (Phoenix book published by the university of Chicago press - translation by Stuart Gilbert).

Excellent book. You don't have to agree with all what is said there, but it can make you think differently. One of the books where if you do not read between the lines, you are loosing a lot of the content. The story is secondary. And definitely, this is not the book you would read or even want to read in one day.

Overall, it's an extraordinary accomplishment. Together with Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, one of the best books out there.

I would add to the previous three reviews a brief note on the exceptional quality of the English translation. It is rare indeed for a translation to rival its uniquely poetic original. There will be plenty of readers for whom the esthetic enjoyment of the finely mastered English language will provide, on its own, a source of inspiration and endless wonder. This book is also one of my most prized posessions. Its reaparition in print may signify the longing for civilization and reason of a world saturated with ignorance, abject superficiality and blindly upheld pseudo-values. Those still able to think - rejoice!