On 27 October 1949, a Lockheed Constellation passenger plane left Paris for New York. Hours later, it disappeared on approach to its scheduled stopover in the Azores. It was found on a mountainside five miles from its intended landing zone.
There were no survivors.
Among those lost in the accident were heavyweight boxer Marcel Cerdan flying to New York for a world title fight; 30-year-old virtuoso violinist Ginette Neveu; Kay Kamen, Walt Disney's merchandising tsar; five Basque shepherds emigrating to America; a pilot who ran missions for the Free French during the war.
Constellation tells the untold true stories of the forty-eight men and women who died on board, and paints a moving portrait of their place in the changing post-war world and of their hopes and dreams for the life awaiting them across the Atlantic.
Adrien Bosc's magnetic debut novel is a memorial to an air disaster that happened half a century ago. But it is also a love song to the forgotten lives that every tragedy scatters around it like so much debris, and a poignant investigation into the nature of collective tragedy.
- ISBN10 1781255377
- ISBN13 9781781255377
- Publish Date 3 August 2017 (first published 20 August 2015)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 29 July 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Serpent's Tail
- Edition Main
- Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
- Pages 192
- Language English