During the First World War, a French reconnaissance plane carried a crew of just two: pilot and observer.

Jean Herbillon arrives at the front imagining aerial combat as a route to glory; Claude Maury is already carrying another wound entirely, hoping military distinction might somehow recover the woman he has lost. Together they become one of the squadron’s strongest crews, their intimacy forged inside an astonishingly new kind of warfare where survival is measured in weeks rather than years. 

First published in 1923 and drawing closely on Kessel’s own wartime experience in the French air force, it is an incredible book about the emotional economy of men at war. It traces bravado, fear, tenderness, rivalry and the intensity produced by living beside death. The bond between Herbillon and Maury becomes considerably more complicated when they discover that their private lives intersect in a way neither expected. Lean, romantic and psychologically sharp, it is both an aviation novel and a study of friendship under pressure.

Pushkin Press, London, 2016. First Pushkin Press edition, first printing. Paperback. First published in French as L’Équipage in 1923; this English translation by André Naffis-Sahely first published here in 2016. Light shelf wear and faint handling marks to pale covers; corners and edges remain tidy. Internally clean and unmarked; binding firm. Very good+ condition.