translated from Spanish: video | Is “The Little Prince” inspired by our country?

Undoubtedly, “The Little Prince” is one of the most popular books in the world and the second most translated after the Bible. Its author, the French aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry died in a plane crash on a day like today in 1944 and lived 15 months in Argentina.This last fact is important because it is believed that his time in our country inspired the author to write one of the parts of the story of the young prince.

Saint-Exupéry was born in 1900 and from an early age he dedicated himself to piloting airplanes. In 1929 he arrived in Buenos Aires as director of the company Aeropostale. This first experience flying over our country inspired him to write his novel “Night Flight” published in 1931.In less than a year of his arrival, the Frenchman found geographies of our territory that amazed him such as the Andes, the Forests and Patagonian steppes, Tierra del Fuego and much more. What’s more, he wrote another book about the days when he lost a friend in the mountain range titled “Land of Men.”

During the months that Antoine flew over our soils he found something that caught his attention powerfully near the city of Concordia, Entre Ríos and that he reflected in his book: “I had landed in a field and I did not know that I was going to live a fairy tale,” he wrote in “Land of Men.” The truth is that the discovery was nothing of the other world but a large family house of the time with daughters and some animals but, scholars of his works, believe that this meeting could have inspired some scenes of “The Little Prince”, written in 1943.In 1932 the author published an article entitled “Argentine Princesses” where he described all this and gave even more support to the theory. In this video, Pupina Plomer tells us all the details. Don’t miss it.

Original source in Spanish