BOOK 196: THE LITTLE PRINCE: ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY
The novella has been voted the best book of the 20th century in France. Translated into 300 languages and dialects, selling nearly two million copies annually, and with year-to-date sales of over 140 million copies worldwide,it has become one of the best-selling and most translated books ever published.
Since its first publication, the novella has been adapted to numerous art forms and media, including audio recordings, radio plays, live stage, film, television, ballet, and opera.
Though ostensibly styled as a children's book, The Little Prince makes several observations about life and human nature. For example, Saint-Exupéry tells of a fox meeting the young prince during his travels on Earth. The story's essence is contained in the fox saying that "One sees clearly only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eye." Other key morals articulated by the fox are: "You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed," and "It is the time you have lost for your rose that makes your rose so important." The fox's messages are arguably the book's most famous quotations because they deal with human relationships.
In The Little Prince, its narrator, the pilot, talks of being stranded in the desert beside his crashed aircraft. The account clearly drew on Saint-Exupéry's own experience in the Sahara, an ordeal described in detail in his 1939 memoir Wind, Sand and Stars(original French: Terre des hommes).
TRIVIA: The B612 Foundation is a private foundation created to track Near-Earth objectsthat might pose a threat to Earth, and is dedicated to protecting the planet from asteroid strikes, similar to the Tunguska event of 1908. The private foundationwas founded by a group of U.S. scientists and astronauts, including Clark Chapman, Piet Hut, Rusty Schweickart and Ed Lu in October 2002. The non-profit organization is named in honour of the prince's home asteroid.
An asteroid discovered in 1975, 2578 Saint-Exupéry, was also named after the author of The Little Prince.
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