Antoine Saint - Exupéry

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born in Lyon, France, in 1900 at 8 Peyrat Street (now Antoine De Saint Exupéry Street), the third child of Antoine Jean Baptiste De Saint Exupéry and Marie Roger Fonscolombe. After attending religious institutions, where he proved to be a rebellious student, he consecutively failed at the Naval Academy and the Ecole Centrale before finally enrolling in the School of Fine Arts. In 1921, during his military service, he obtained a pilot's license and became a pilot for the French Air Company and later for Latecoere. At the refueling airport on the Casablanca-Dakar line at Cape Judy in Morocco, he discovered the desert. His first novel, "Southern Mail," was published in 1928. The following year, Saint-Exupéry became the director of Aeroposta Argentina in Buenos Aires, where he met Consuelo Suncin, whom he married in 1931. That same year, he was awarded the Prix Femina for his novel "Night Flight" and resigned from Aeroposta. He became the chief correspondent for France-Soir in Russia and then in Spain in 1936. In 1937, returning to aviation, he established the air connection between Casablanca and Timbuktu. After a serious accident, he devoted himself to writing. His novel "Wind, Sand and Stars," published in 1939, earned him the Grand Prix for Fiction from the French Academy. With the outbreak of war, he returned to active service despite his health condition but was discharged in Algiers in 1940 due to age. He left for New York, where he embarked on a major work, "The Citadel," which compiled the reflections of a lifetime and was published only in 1948. In 1943, he published "The Little Prince" and "Letter to a Hostage." He returned to Europe to join the French air forces with the rank of major. On July 31, 1944, he undertook a reconnaissance mission to the Rhine Valley, from which he did not return. Saint-Exupéry disappeared with his plane in 1944, off the coast of Corsica, while on his ninth combat mission pursuing German fighters.