Aviator, Author. He was a 20th-century award-winning French novelist, poet, and journalist as well as a pioneering aviator. Born one of five children of impoverished aristocrats, his parents were Marie and Jean de Saint-Exupéry. With his father's sudden death in 1904, his mother moved them to the family's châteaux in Le Mans. He attended a Jesuit school before being sent to a boarding school in Switzerland after the outbreak of World War I. He returned to France in 1917. A notoriously poor student, he failed the entrance examination to the École Navale, thus turned to studying architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1921, during his compulsory military service, he learned how to fly, becoming a pilot in the Air Force the following year. After leaving the service in 1926, he flew with Aeropostale, a flying airmail service from France to Africa. For a time, he had his own aviation company in South America, before being a journalist in Germany, Spain and Russia. Of the poetry he wrote, his most recognized poem is "Generation to Generation." From this, he also launched his writing career, publishing the novel "Courrier Sud" ("Southern Mail,") in 1929. In 1931, he published his second book, "Vol de nuit" ("Night Flight"). In 1935, he attempted to beat the speed record between Paris and Saigon, but his plane crashed en route. During this time, he also worked as a test pilot and a reporter for "Paris-Soir." In 1939, he published "Terre des hommes" ("Wind, Sand, and Stars") which earned the Grand Prize for Novel Writing from the Académie Française and the National Book Award in the United States. During World War II, despite debilitating injuries suffered in previous aircraft crashes, he rejoined the French Air Force as a Reconnaissance Pilot and was decorated for bravery in 1940. After the German occupation of France, he fled to the United States for a 27-month exile. He wrote "Flight to Arras" (1942) and "Letter to a Hostage" (1943) while in exile. The last work published in his lifetime is inarguably his best known, "Le Petit Prince" ( "The Little Prince") written and illustrated by the author in 1943, and published in both French and English in the United States. During World War II, the novel was banned by the Vichy Regime in France. His original watercolor illustrations are valued collector's items. The novel has since sold over 200 million copies worldwide. On the 2023 list of "Top 35 Best Selling Books of All Time," "The Little Prince" was in third place and translated into over 250 languages. In 1943, he rejoined a Free French unit in North Africa. On July 31, 1944, he took off from a Corsican airfield to conduct a reconnaissance mission over France, and never returned. He was listed as Killed in Action. In 1948, the philosophical "The Wisdom of the Sands" was published posthumously. In 2000, divers near Marseilles, France, discovered the wreckage of a WWII-era plane on the seabed, which was later raised and identified as his. "The Little Prince" was recorded in 1974 as a Grammy-winning children's album and was adapted into film in 1974 and 2015. There is also The Little Prince Theme Park in Alsace, France, described as an aerial amusement park. He was awarded the Croix de guerre avec palm posthumously in 1944. Besides the cenotaph in St. Leonard Cemetery in Switzerland and the small bronze bust of the author in a Paris park, there are other memorials: A copper statue showing him and The Little Prince sitting on top of a white marble column was erected on June 29, 2005 near the street of his birth in Lyon as well as a Bronze statue of him with a book in his hand with the figure of the Little Prince in Toulouse. A statue of him and a lion is on display at the Lyon airport. The sculpture "The Little Prince" was erected in Abakan in July of 2013.