Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
1 book analyzed
Biography
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944) was an aristocrat, aviator, and writer who lived the adventures he described. He flew mail routes over the Sahara and the Andes in the 1920s-30s, crashed multiple times (including a near-fatal 1935 crash in the Libyan desert), and wrote lyrical accounts of flight, solitude, and human connection. When France fell to the Nazis in 1940, he fled to New York, where he wrote The Little Prince in 1942-43 while consumed by guilt over his exile, separation from his wife Consuelo, and the destruction of his country. He returned to combat in 1944, flying reconnaissance for the Free French Air Force. On July 31, 1944, he took off from Corsica on a mission over southern France and never returned. His plane was found in the Mediterranean in 2004. He was 44 years old.