Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900 - 1944) was a French aviator, writer and journalist whose books drew directly on his years flying mail routes over the Sahara, the Andes and the South Atlantic. [1] He won the Prix Femina for Vol de nuit and the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française for Terre des hommes, and wrote Le Petit Prince, one of the most translated books in the world. [2] He disappeared on a wartime reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean in July 1944. [3]
Early life
Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupéry was born on 29 June 1900 in Lyon into an aristocratic family of modest means; his father died when he was four. [1] He was educated at Catholic schools including Notre-Dame de Mongré and the Villa Saint-Jean at Fribourg in Switzerland, and afterwards studied at the Lycée Saint-Louis in Paris in preparation for the naval academy, an examination he failed.
He took his first flight as a passenger at the age of twelve and learned to fly during military service with an air regiment at Strasbourg in 1921, qualifying as a pilot the following year.
The airmail years
In 1926 Saint-Exupéry joined the Compagnie Latécoère, later Aéropostale, which flew mail between France, Spain, North Africa and South America. [2] These routes were flown in unreliable aircraft without modern navigation, and many of his colleagues were killed; the experience gave him the themes of duty, solitude, courage and human solidarity that run through his writing. [1] His first novel, Courrier Sud (1929), was followed by Vol de nuit (1931), which won the Prix Femina and made him known internationally.
He attempted several long-distance record flights. In December 1935 he and his navigator André Prévot crashed in the Libyan desert and survived four days without adequate water before being rescued by a Bedouin traveller. [3] The episode became the centre of Terre des hommes (1939), published in English as Wind, Sand and Stars, which won the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française and the United States National Book Award.
War, exile and The Little Prince
Saint-Exupéry flew reconnaissance missions during the German invasion of France in 1940, an experience recorded in Pilote de guerre (1942). [1] After the armistice he went into exile in the United States, where he lived in New York and pressed for American entry into the war while remaining aloof from the factional quarrels of the French exile community.
There he wrote and illustrated Le Petit Prince, published in 1943, in which a pilot stranded in the desert meets a boy travelling from a tiny asteroid. [2] Written for children but addressed equally to adults, the book has been translated into several hundred languages and dialects and has sold tens of millions of copies.
Disappearance
Despite being over the usual age limit and carrying injuries from earlier crashes, he persuaded the Free French forces to let him fly again and joined a reconnaissance squadron based in the Mediterranean. [3] On 31 July 1944 he took off from Corsica in an unarmed P-38 Lightning to photograph territory ahead of the Allied landings in southern France and never returned.
A bracelet bearing his name was recovered by a fisherman off Marseille in 1998, and wreckage of his aircraft found near the île de Riou was identified in 2004. [1] He was posthumously recognised as mort pour la France and held the Croix de guerre and the Legion of Honour.
Legacy
An unfinished philosophical work, Citadelle, appeared posthumously in 1948. [2] Lyon's airport carries his name, and an asteroid was named for him. [3]
