The Flight of the Phoenix

by Elleston Trevor

No way out ... Twelve men survived the crash when a blinding, unexpected sandstorm sent their Skytruck air freighter plummeting to the Earth. Now they are in Hell, stranded and alone in the empty wastes of the Sahara, facing a slow, agonizing death under the unrelenting Libyan sun. Two of them have the skills to avert a terrible fate: the brilliant, obsessed engineer Stringer, and the tormented pilot Towns. Bitter enemies, they must now work together to build an impossible dream from the wreckage and fly it to freedom ... if madness, rage, suspicion, and the merciless desert don't destroy them first.

This is a story so riveting it inspired two major motion pictures -- the memorable 1965 film starring Jimmy Stewart and the 2004 film starring Dennis Quaid.

Genres: Fiction, Adventure, Survival, Thriller, Africa, Classics, Audiobook

320 pages, paper

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Author has published other books under the names: Adam Hall, Mansell Black, Trevor Burgess, Trevor Dudley-Smith, Roger Fitzalan, Howard North, Simon Rattray, Warwick Scott, Caesar Smith, Lesley Stone.

Author Trevor Dudley-Smith was born in Kent, England on February 17, 1920. He attended Yardley Court Preparatory School and Sevenoaks School. During World War II, he served in the Royal Air Force as a flight engineer. After the war, he started writing full-time. He lived in Spain and France before moving to the United States and settling in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1946 he used the pseudonym Elleston Trevor for a non-mystery book, and later made it his legal name. He also wrote under the pseudonyms of Adam Hall, Simon Rattray, Mansell Black, Trevor Burgess, Roger Fitzalan, Howard North, Warwick Scott, Caesar Smith, and Lesley Stone. Even though he wrote thrillers, mysteries, plays, juvenile novels, and short stories, his best-known works are The Flight of the Phoenix written as Elleston Trevor and the series about British secret agent Quiller written as Adam Hall. In 1965, he received the Edgar Allan Poe Award by Mystery Writers of America and the French Grand Prix de Littérature Policière for The Quiller Memorandum. This book was made into a 1967 movie starring George Segal and Alec Guinness. He died of cancer on July 21, 1995.

Reviews

[Quirkyreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saved this book off the discard pile and went into it blind.

This book turned out to be a fast paced action story that starts with a plane crash in the Lybian dessert and goes from there. Who survives and who doesn't.

If you can find this book give it a go. It is a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

[Mary Heron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this story fascinating, supposedly based on a true event a group of oil company workers aboard a plane crash in the.Mongolian desert. The plane is beyond fixing and the men are stranded with very little In the way of supplies. With no hope of rescue either. The men try a few ideas for rescue but these come to nothing and there's a gripping scene involving smugglers. But by far the best of the books are the characters and there are not enough superlative s to describe the ingenious and imaginative solution the group finds for their survival..................

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first experience with The Flight of the Phoenix was seeing the original movie version which was released in 1965, starring James Stewart and Richard Attenborough. It's always been one of my favourites, a battle against the harsh desert after a plane crash in a sand storm. At the time I had no idea it was based on a novel. While in Dubai back in 2005, the remake starring Dennis Quaid came out and for all that it was glitzier, I enjoyed it again. Since then I've seen the original and the remake a couple of times more. It's a movie you can sit and enjoy more than once. Lucky for me, while attending a local book fair a couple of years ago, I discovered that the movies had been based on a book, written by Elleston Trevor, aka Trevor Dudley Smith. Needless to say I purchased it to see how it compared to the movies that followed the book. Well, I wasn't disappointed in the least. The movies were very respectful of the book, it's tone, it's characterization. Excellent story, suspenseful, well-paced and well-crafted. For those who might not have seen the movie, or read the book, the story is about a group of oil well workers being flown out of their camp by an old pilot. The plane is caught in a sand storm and crashes in the Libyan desert. One of the passengers is a somewhat mad aircraft designer who tells the others they can rebuild the plane from the wreckage and fly out. With the chances of rescue very slim, due to the plane flying off course during the storm, the rest of the passengers come around to the idea. The book deals with the friction between the pilot, Frank Towns and the designer, Stringer and other tests of will in a superb fashion. There are some twists and turns and surprises and I won't ruin them. Suffice it to say, the story is timeless, excellent and well worth the read. Or check out either of the movies, both excellent in their own way.

[Dwayne Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

A plane crashes in the Libyan desert. Its crew struggle to survive and return to civilization. Their only hope is to build a scaled-down working airplane from the wreck. The captain staggers under the weight of the deaths that occurred. Can the seemingly unfeeling passenger really design The Phoenix and lead its construction?

A powerful and inspirational story.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and now I feel like I need to track down the movie and watch it. It had a great pace and it was suspenseful. The characters were also great and the monkey was a nice touch (so were the buzzards and the Bedouins) . I liked how they all interacted and how they remained true to their roles. I loved that. The author captured the different relationships well. So 4 stars.

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've long been a fan of author Adam Hall and his popular (but not nearly popular enough) "Quiller" series of spy novels. However, I only recently learned that "AH" was just one of the many pseudonyms used by the insanely-prolific Trevor Dudley-Smith, who also wrote Phoenix and a number of other adventure tales as Elleston Trevor — although only Phoenix has survived the test of time, largely (I'm guessing) due to it being turned into a popular Jimmy Stewart movie just a year after its publication.*

Trevor's style here is considerably different from the first-person tough guy voice of the Quiller books, although his ending is similarly (and nicely) abrupt. In the Quiller stories, our hero always wraps up his assignment on the final page (if not in the final paragraph), and that's it — no follow-up "what happened to everyone next?" or even "but did the bad guy ever get caught?" And the same is true here with Phoenix: as everyone knows (although stop here if you don't), yes, there ARE survivors, but the book simply ends with "out of the desert came seven men, and a monkey." After building up to it for the entire book, there are then zero details of the ridiculously cobbled-together plane's actual flight aside from its nail-biting takeoff; no resolution of the various "what rewards/punishments await A, B or C based on their behaviors in the desert," or even any cursory "will it or won't it fly?" tension, which a lesser writer would have milked for all it was worth.

Nope; just "seven men and a monkey." Which is perfect.

While I've critized "Hall" for his lack of local color in some of the Quiller books (apparently he was working with a limited, pre-internet research budget), "Trevor" here really does seem to know his way around the desert and aircraft, which makes sense (at least the second part), since he served as an RAF flight engineer during WWII. In fact, the author returned to a very similar setting — a crashed plane in the northern Sahara, and lots of vultures — in the 1973 Quiller tale The Tango Briefing.

* There was also a critically panned remake in 2004 starring Dennis Quaid. Both films are hard to find on any streaming services — at least for free — although you can watch the original on YouTube.

[Amene · Rating 2 out of 5]

با اینکه تم تکراری داشت ولی من به عنوان یک نمایش رادیویی دهه ی پنجاه گوش دادم که خوب بود. صدای شهلا ریاحی و ایرج جنتی عطایی و ثریا قاسمی جوان.
از سایت ایران صدا گوش بدین.

[Vicky Hunt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Gripping Tale of Survival and Courage

The author, Trevor Dudley-Smith, was a man of many pen names, Elleston Trevor being the name this most beloved classic was penned under. (He is also the author of the well known Quiller Memorandum. That is a spy novel that begins a whole series.) This book is a novel set in the Central Libyan Desert. The Flight of the Phoenix is the fictional novel about a senior pilot, aging and refusing to adapt to changing tech, who gets caught in a sandstorm with 13 other men aboard his craft over the Sahara. What follows is the struggle between the Pilot and a young engineer who designs a smaller plane from the pieces of the wreckage. While this is the chief conflict, there are smaller scale conflicts between the other men, and the overriding battle with sun, sand, and dehydration.

With themes of human weakness, pride, ego, strengths vs. weakness, love, hatred, anger, and of course a determination to live against all odds, the book will take you on a journey across roiling sand dunes into the darkness and light of the human soul. You may find that the goodness in each man is more startling than his darkness.

I enjoyed this Kindle book with the Audible whisper-sync. I read it in preparation for watching the 1965 James Stewart movie, followed by the 2004 movie starring Dennis Quaid. I'm looking forward to seeing these two tonight on Amazon Prime. A few quotes from the book follow.

"This machine had the power of bestowing on them another thirty, fifty years of life"

"The heart is airborne before the airplane."

"A first-class pilot had gone on flying, failing his conversion tests and turning his back on the big main-schedule routes, accepting short-haul work because he had to live in the air;"

"only a brain like his could build a machine like the Phoenix in this region of hell and give them all a chance of getting out."

[Ben Boulden · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Flight of the Phoenix is a masterpiece of survival fiction. The author deftly, without causing reader confusion, changes perspective from one character to another. The fear, anger, and the disquiet of the characters is captured perfectly. The animosity between the pilot and the aircraft designer is well crafted. Phoenix is a wonderfully character-driven, but well-plotted, novel of a certain age.

[Mike Jennings · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you don't know the story let me enlighten you (no spoilers).

A passenger plane full of oil drillers and technical staff crashes in the desert during a sandstorm. They manage to pull themselves together and await rescue but the water is running out and so they can't wait too long ... what do they do?

Absolutely bloody marvellous.

If you don't know Elleston Trevor (or Adam Hall, Trevor Burgess, Caesar Smith, Mansell Black, Simon Rattray, Warwick Scott - all the same man) then go and seek him out. If you enjoy spy thrillers try The Quiller Memorandum. If your thing is WW2 adventures go for Squadron Airborne, or The Big Pickup. You won't be disappointed.

[Ron Wroblewski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw the movie version many years ago, but this is the first time I have read the book. How to you build a plane to fly from crashed parts of a plane that crashed in the Sahara Desert. You will have to read the book to find out.

[Erik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've seen the first movie version (with James Stewart) a couple of times over the years, so when I saw the original novel on the shelves at Value Village, I immediately scooped it up, knowing that it would be a treat to read.

Definitely, a Guy story. Lots of sweat, grunting and mutual hostility. But the essential survival story and its conflict between the characters is quite ingenious and carries you right along to the exciting finale.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My dearly departed grandfathers favourite book of all time.

It follows a place crashing in the desert and the crews attempts to build their way out. An almost certain early inspiration for Andy Weirs The Martian, phoenix is a scientific and mathematical journey through survival.

We go way beyond water rations here to the point of how much can be produced each night using condensation, how many people that have, who is working, efficiency of working at day vs at night. The same with food and other supplies and all the while knowing at any moment something could happen, like a weather change, that completely changes the equation. Everything hinges on water production.

We also have massive internal fighting within the group. The one man who is seemingly able to think his way out of the situation is an asshole, and whether he is a natural born ass or someone who is behaving a certain way because of how he is perceived, there are moments you feel like strangling him for being so petty and prideful when a number of lives are on the line. His moment of realisation is an incredible point in the book and I wont ruin it for you if you have not read it.

The Dennis Quid movie did a half decent job at capturing the relationships between the characters but never quite reached the right level of desperation. In the book you feel that lives re hanging on a capful of water as they constantly find themselves swinging between working as a team or dying as individuals.

If you liked The Martian I would recommend this in the same way that if you told me you liked the Hunger Games I'd say go read Battle Royale.

[Louis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was surprised to see this in the new mp3 book collection at my library. I had never read this title, although I have read other books by Trevor. My main criticism of this book is that it was too much like real life. People trapped in the desert for a month with declining resources are bound to re-hash the same arguments or have the same boring things happen to them time after time. But I don't need to read about them more than once, and this happens in this book. I enjoyed the movie, but it also tended to ruin the book for me. I always felt that the rejection of the design because the designer made model planes was ridiculous. I had almost thought that it didn't appear in the book at all but it reared its ugly head near the end. However, the book handled the situation much less dramatically, and more realistically, than the movie did and so I appreciated that fact. I was a little disappointed that more about the fate of the characters after they return to civilization was not pursued. An annoying feature of the book was Stringer's constant temper tantrums and the tension between him and the captain. Plus the technical mumbo jumbo was a bit much, although it began to actually make sense to me by the end of the book.
But in general I felt that the book was an accurate depiction of what it would be like to be stranded in the desert and how people would react to this situation.

[Brent Ursenbach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed the read as the original movie with Jimmy Stewart is a great movie. The movie, with Stewart's incredible performance as Frank Towns, the pilot, is better than the book.

[B.E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the original movie based on this novel - with James Stewart and Richard Attenborough. Love this book, too. Excellent and well worth reading.

[Peter Brickwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still a good read but then I am an old man.

[Rachel Myers · Rating 4 out of 5]

You really could feel their suffering and the dry conditions. Dark at moments.

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars--very interesting to finally read the book that the 1965 movie came from. The movie is extremely well done and follows the book quite well.

[Van Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Unforgettable Adventure

A oilfield supply plane crashes in the Sahara desert after it flies into a sandstorm at 30,000 feet. The men who survive must contend with incredible odds as they try to convert the wreckage of the aircraft while struggling to stay alive in the inhospitable desert with its blistering heat, perilous supply of water, murderous Arab tribesmen, and ravenous vultures bent on making a meal of them! The motley crew of survivors must also set aside their differences when one of them decides that they can assemble a plane from the remains of the fuselage. The 50-year old pilot and the young, bespectacled German aircraft designer clash repeatedly because the pilot doesn't think the designer can cobble together a plane that can fly. Better than the brilliant Robert Aldrich masterpiece because you feel like you are stranded alongside these chaps in the desert. They toil during the nights to rebuild the plane, and sleep during the day because they cannot withstand the ravages of a merciless sun. Trevor has penned a masterpiece!

[P.S. Winn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great story that delves into the psychology of people when faced with a tragic circumstances. The characters in this book get just that when the plane they are in crashes and survival vies with underhanded things happening. This is one to grab for adventure, suspense and psychological thrills

[chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

this differs in some cases considerably from the recent movie with Dennis Quaid (2004). some cases better. some cases worse. and differs from the original movie with Jimmy Stewart (1965).
there's some mighty clever dialogue in here.

[Chris Conrad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good but one of those rare times when the movie (Jimmy Stewart version) is actually better than the book.

[Paul Spence · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Flight of the Phoenix, Elleston Trevor (for that was what he had his name legally changed to) gives us a harrowing tale of survival against the elements and human frailties in the Saharan desert. Fourteen men and a monkey, returning from the Libyan oilfields, live through a plane crash, but are left without food, water, or a radio, and because a sandstorm had blown them off course, no one is looking for them.

The pilot, Frank Towns, is so caught up in justifiably blaming himself that he is nearly ready to give up. But his navigator, Lew Moran, coaxes him towards survival and mediates between the rest of the group and Stringer, a young, arrogant, and hypersensitive engineer who has figured out a way to cobble together a Jerry-rigged smaller plane from the wreckage of the original. Stringer, though unbearably officious, is in all likelihood their only way out, if Moran can keep him from storming off in a fit of pique and keep the others from killing him.

Also among the survivors are Trucker Cobb, a chief driller being sent home from the fields because he's begun to lose his mind and Captain Harris, a gung-ho, by-the-book, British officer and several of his less enthusiastic men. There's also Roberts, who, in a gesture of insane but touching tenderness is giving his water ration to the monkey. Together they form an ill-matched group and as thirst, starvation, exposure, madness, and desperation turn up the torque, social order and morality and simple human decency are shunted aside and the men begin to turn on one another. The only thing that gives them some sense of purpose is the slender possibility that Stringer will somehow manage to salvage a workable plane and that Towns will get it together enough to fly them out.

Mr. Trevor keeps the action moving, but doesn't hesitate to draw out the tension, particularly between Stringer and Towns, the two men who are the equally important keys to survival, but who end up vying for authority over the group. This adds an element of Lord of the Flies to what would be a decent enough action yarn anyway. In this case at least, though the movie is now better remembered, the book holds up well as an exciting piece of fiction in its own right.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book puts the "crash" in "crashout." Beyond a survival story of a downed plane in the Sahara, though, this is a taut, tense tale about the compromises of teamwork, the shield of ego, and what people latch onto when they're becoming someone no longer recognizable. Trevor is a top-notch writer of aviation thrillers, given his own engineering background, and pinpoints every technical detail necessary, but this is less of a thriller than slow-onset horror, the mood as staggering and suffocating as the environment in which characters are dying of thirst. A particular delight of this story is the simplicity of character descriptions—Trevor is masterful in depicting a full existence in as little as a sentence or a few attributes, and this book is no exception (with clever names at play, too, Stringer is literally the man who strings the rest of the crew along, while Albert Crow descends into animalistic nature both through his adoption of the pet monkey and his bloodthirsty killing of a vulture with his bare hands). The book loses a star due to some murkiness in that certain key moments of the story were underdeveloped (yes, the ending is one of them, but anyone who's read Quiller knows that this is classic Trevor, so can't fault him purely on this), in particular the pacing of the Stringer reveal: there weren't enough clues earlier on, nor sufficient emotional punch once it did occur. Overall, though, the interpersonal confrontations—especially driven by the more dogged characters—are such a treat to read (with swifter POV changes than typical Trevor). I can see why this fueled two film adaptations, but there are definitely better Trevors to read.

[Jaime · Rating 4 out of 5]

British author, Elleston Trevor penned an exciting but shorter novel (320 pages) that packs a wallop. I first saw the 1965 movie which is based on this best-selling adventure novel. It is the harrowing tale of a planeload of men from a mining field headed across the Sahara Desert to Benghazi. The converted ancient cargo plane runs into a vicious sandstorm that clogs the plane's engines causing it to crashland in the barren desert. Some die but the surviviors soon realize that their hope for rescue may not come. The tale of the men holding onto hope soon is dashed and they must come up with an alternate plan first proposed by one of the passengers, Springer who proposes they build a 'new' airplane from the plane's wreckage. The characters all have diverse back stories which are brought out as doubt, dehydration, and exhaustion set in. The survivors are a cross-section of society - some noble and some not. The main tension in the novel comes from the young airplane designer, Springer and the veteran pilot, Townes who doubts the 'new' plane can fly. One goes through the paradox of the men surviving on a dwindling supply of water and dates while building a plane with fingers crossed. Although this is not a long novel, one gets enveloped in the tale because the author packs a lot into each page..

[Alex Lisle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wished I'd been able to read the book before the film, but that didn't happen, so as reading, I found myself ticking off the dramatic moments the film faithfully reproduced. When I say film, I mean the first BW one with James Stewart and Richard Attenborough rather than the more recent remake that I frankly can not bear.

But what the book offers over and above is an appreciation of the awfulness of the desert and what dying of thirst slowly looks and, more miserably, feels like. The part of the designer, Stringer, played by Hardy Kruger, is the only notable departure, and his portrayal rather eclipses the original character, such that I could only visualise the book's enigmatic Stringer, as the film's infuriating Dorfmann, which was no bad thing.

I'm surprised that Elleston Trevor is so little known now, given his enormous output, including his "Quiller" spy novels, only one of which became a film, and a very good one too. I shall keep a sharp lookout for more of his.

My paperback copy is a Pan book from 1966, and so has a wonderful woodcut-like cover illustration of the plane silhouetted by a brutal sun, the rays of which radiate an inescapable brittle mesh, but for teamwork and talents of opposite inclination, showing perhaps just how much we really do need one another.

[Gary Daly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Goodreads Review, ‘The Flight of the Phoenix’ by Elleston Trevor.

A real magical find (Midway Garden Library). Thoroughly loved the language and story narrative as written in 1965. There has been for me a concerning drift towards ‘changing’ language, style and expression to meet cultural and contemporary diversity standards and this is my issue with eBooks because they can change, delete and remove books freely. Though it seems that the citizenry are ok with this blossoming cultural behaviour. So second hand bookshops which are also disappearing at a rapid rate. Enough! ‘The Flight of the Phoenix’ is a fabulous and well paced adventure story. All the characters are men. They are good old tough guys in that they express themselves like my grandfather (if I knew him, he died before I could meet him). A spot on fun novel. Totally engrossing and packed with fantastic dialogue and situational expectations. Total awesome read. Found at Midway Garden Library, Denistone East, NSW (might hold onto this one as well). Enjoy.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing story of survival, ingenuity, self-blame, and power struggles (between the pilot and the engineer). I was intrigued with the ability of the engineer to evaluate the possibility of reconstructing the plane before sharing it with the others. Then their ability to use the tools available to bring the plane to life. Building the plane gave them hope and focus, to continue despite their fatigue, hunger, and thirst, rather than giving up and waiting to die.

Written by an Englishman, which explains the lack of expressing any in depth emotions, in spite of all the drama, this was very much a stiff upper lip story. The 1965 movie with Jimmy Steward was much truer to the book’s storyline, than the 2004 one with Dennis Quaid. It is fun to look online at photos of the various phase of the plane’s construction.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I've seen Jimmy Stewart in The Flight of the Phoenix, I had never read the book. In compliance with the rule of life, the book was much better than the movie--and the movie was excellent. The story explores the difficulties faced by men living on a razor's edge between life and death. Lost in the desert moves from a concept to a reality of the horrible experience of trying to find enough water to live day-to-day. Regardless of the outcome, the men must overcome their fear and lethargy and fight for life. The plot has surprises and twists and turn. Our desire to live is a powerful motivation highlighted in the book. Trevor wrote 50 books and to my knowledge this is the first I've read. I intend to read more!