The Little Prince

The Little Prince is a poetic tale, with illustrations by the author, in which a pilot stranded in the desert meets a young prince fallen to Earth from a tiny asteroid. The story is philosophical and includes social criticism, remarking on the strangeness of the adult world. It was written during a period when Saint-Exupéry fled to North America subsequent to the Fall of France during the Second World War, witnessed first hand by the author and captured in his memoir Flight to Arras. The adult fable, according to one review, is actually "...an allegory of Saint-Exupéry's own life-his search for childhood certainties and interior peace, his mysticism, his belief in human courage and brotherhood.... but also an allusion to the tortured nature of their relationship.