Generations of readers have been enthralled by Antoine de Saint-Exupery's observations. But what makes the book so special? DW's Nadine Wocjik explains.I remember clearly when my mother appeared in my nursery one evening with "The Little Prince."

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"What a great book this must be," I thought, noticing how carefully and precisely she handled and opened it.

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And while the drawings of the little boy with the golden, shaggy hair and the green outfit piqued my interest, I found the story disturbing.

Allow me to explain. The tiny planet seemed like a terrible prison. And that strange, spiteful rose — why does he like the flower so much? And why does he make friends with a fox and then leave him again?

As my mother placidly read the short chapters aloud, I didn't dare say how uncomfortable I found the story. While the world's most famous fairy tale hero was celebrated with mugs, puzzles, T-shirts, and film adaptations, I tended to keep my distance from this strange alien child.

Second chance brings back memories

"The Little Prince" is about a boy who lives on a very small planet together with a demanding rose, two active volcanoes, an extinct volcano, and seedlings of the Baobab tree to fight. The Baobab and the prince don't get along well, and the rose is grumpy and ingratiating. So the little prince decides to go on a journey, exploring seven planets. The last stop is Earth, where he meets a pilot who has crash-landed in the desert.

Now, 80 years after its first publication, I wanted to give this modern fairy tale another chance. The 27 short chapters made quick reading and this time the simple language resonated, along with the unpretentious, watercolor pictures. Slowly, I realized I had been misled as a child.

It is not a children's fairy tale at all; rather a reminder of the child in all of us. The book deals with the really big questions, such as love, loneliness and death, that adults ask themselves. No wonder, then, that as an elementary school child I clearly felt that something important was being discussed here, something that I was not able to grasp given my tender years. The seriousness had once frightened me, but now I felt enlightened.

"The Little Prince" is the last bookby the passionate aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery and was first published in New York in 1943. By the time the French edition was published, three years later, the now-celebrated author had passed away after failing to return from a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean during World War II in 1944.

Author and professional pilot

Born in Lyon in 1900, Saint-Exupery's flying career began with sightseeing flights over Paris for tourists. In the 1920s, he flew the Toulouse-Casablanca-Dakar legs, eventually becoming airfield chief in the then Spanish-controlled zone in South Morocco, in the Sahara desert, where he repeatedly rescued colleagues who had made emergency landings.

He then moved to Argentina in 1929 where was in charge of night airmail. Later, he tried to set air distance records and survived two crashes: Paris-Saigon and New York-Tierra del Fuego. At the onset of World War II, he was drafted and experienced the Blitz attack by the German Wehrmacht in northeastern France. His life in the air reads like an adventure story and even though he was awarded many literary prizes, Saint-Exupery always saw himself first and foremost as a professional pilot, with writing merely a pastime.

His own story comes to life within "The Little Prince" in that, like the narrator in the fairy tale, Saint-Exupery crashed over a desert and had to survive for days without drinking water until he was rescued.

Few anticipated any kind of success for the book, never mind that it would go on to become not only Saint-Exupery’s most successful, but also the best-selling book in France.

"The Little Prince" is said to have sold more than 200 million copies, has been translated into around 340 languages and dialects, including the language of the Inuit, the Tuareg and the Maya, as well as the fantasy language Klingon from the TV series Star Trek.

Ode to the imagination

"Draw me a sheep," is the first thing the little prince says to the crashed pilot. In response, the latter says: "When something mysterious is particularly impressive, you can't resist. Absurd as it seemed to me, in mortal danger a thousand miles from any human habitation, I took from my pocket a sheet of paper and a fountain pen." The pilot draws three sheep, and all of them are rejected. Exasperated, he finally draws a box and says, "The sheep you want is in there."

To his great astonishment, the strange boy is delighted.

What nonsense, I thought to myself when I was a kid. Why doesn't he draw the sheep the way the prince had asked. I could not grasp the genius of these lines. My childish imagination was strong, but I appreciated correctness and details when a book was read to me. Today, this passage speaks to me: It is an ode to imagination, to unprejudiced childlike clarity.

"The big people never understand anything by themselves. And for children it is much too laborious to explain things to them over and over again," Saint-Exupery writes in his first chapter.

'It is only with the heart that one can see rightly'

The book bubbles over with wisdom. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye" is probably the most famous quotation and has since ended up in numerous poetry albums or emblazoned across the walls of yoga studios around the world.

In addition to thoughts on love, friendship and death, the fairy tale also contains social criticism. The little prince travels to six planets before he arrives on Earth. On each asteroid, he experiences surreal encounters: A monarch seeking subjects; a drunkard who drinks in order to forget that he drinks too much; someone who turns on and off streetlamps in a place that experiences 1,440 sunsets over a 24-hour period; a vain man who wants to be admired; a geographer who explains the world but has not seen it; a businessman who thinks he owns the stars.

My French teacher particularly liked the last one. Of course, we read "Le Petit Prince" in French in class. I didn't like my French teacher; he was a mean, grim-faced man who obviously didn't like children. But while reading about the number-obsessed businessman who was incapable of doing anything else because he was so busy counting stars, even this teacher suddenly seemed endearing. As if he wanted to give us students something. A life lesson. Or perhaps show us his regret: What happened to my childhood dreams?

"The great people had once been children, but few remember," Antoine de Saint-Exupery writes at the very beginning of his fairy tale. What childhood feels like is what "The Little Prince" reminds us of more than almost any other book — and perhaps that's why it has been a perennial worldwide bestseller for 80 years.

This article was originally published in German.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 05, 2023 02:20 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).