Le petit prince(The little prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944)

On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.               

                  -- Le Petit Prince
​                                                                      
(One can only see well with heart. The essential is invisible for the eyes.                           
                 -- The Little Prince)

Book title: Le petit prince
Author: Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944)
Year: 1943

The author:

Antoine de Saint-Exupery was born in Lyon France on 29 June 1900 to an aristocratic family whose lineage can trace back several centuries, but because of his father's early death, his family lived in relative impoverished status.

Although he studied Architecture at early age, his real passion was flying, and after joining military service in 1921, he took private flying lessons and in 1922 was transferred to Frenc Air Force. After an aircraft crash, he stopped flying for a few years and did a series of office jobs, but started flying again in 1926.

Besides flying, his another passion was writing, and almost all of his writings were in one way or another related to or connected with his life and experience as a pilot. Since the year of 1929 when he published his first book Courrier Sud (Southern Mail) until his sudden disappearance in 1944, he wrote and flied, flied and wrote, living the intense life of writer, aviator and journalist.

Fais de ta vie un rêve, et d’un rêve, une réalité.                                  Le Petit Prince

(Make your life a dream, and a dream, a reality.)

The book

After France's amistice with Germany, Saint-Exupery chose to go into exile in North America, and he lived in both USA and Canada from 1941-1944. Although he was far away from the war, he did not seem to enjoy much peace during this period, his health was deteriorating and his mental state unstable, even depressed,  and thus the wife of one of his publishers persuaded him to write a children's book to help calm his nerves. 

In 1942, Saint-Exupery wrote and illustrated Le Little Prince all by himself, and the book was published the following year in USA in both English and French. And since then, it has been translated into 300 langugages and dialects, and was commonly believed as the greatest book written in 20 century France.

And in 75 years since its publication, the book has also been adapted into different literary and art form, including theater, film, cartoon, opera, etc, but the most fitting and beautiful adaptation was undoutedly audiobook, usually recorded with an adult's voice and a voice of a child, just like in the book itself, a dialogue between the narrator/aviator, and an extraordinary little man, or rather an inner dialogue between a man who doesn't want to grow up and his forever innocent soul.

Almost all of the best French acotors have recorded as the narrator in Le Petit Prince, from Gerard Philipe, Sami Frey, To Bernard Giraudeua, Jean-Louis Tintignant, etc. Every recording is unique in the way how each actor interpreted this beautiful and philosophic fairy tale.

Listen to Le Petit Prince in French

Le véritable voyage, ce n’est pas de parcourir le désert ou de franchir de grandes distances sous-marines, c’est de parvenir en un point exceptionnel où la saveur de l’instant baigne tous les contours de la vie intérieure.                                                            
                                                                                                                                             Le Petit Prince

(The real journey, is not to travel over the desert or cross the great distances undersea. It is to arrive at an exceptional point where the all the outlines of the inner life is bathed in the flavor of that moment.

Read Le Petit Prince in French

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