Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, Fonds Bernard Valiquette · Public domain · Source
Also called: Saint-Ex
French aviator and writer who flew the mail over the Sahara and South America and wrote Night Flight, Wind, Sand and Stars and The Little Prince; lost on a reconnaissance flight in 1944
Saint-Exupéry became a pilot on the mail route linking Toulouse and Dakar and took charge of Cape Juby, a tiny base on the Saharan coast, where he wrote his first novel, Southern Mail.
The airmail pilot Guillaumet was forced down by a snowstorm in the winter Andes and survived by walking for five days over snow-covered mountains.
Night Flight, a novel of pilots carrying the mail by night in South America, was published and won the Prix Femina.
Attempting a record flight from Paris to Saigon, Saint-Exupéry crash-landed in the desert west of Egypt and walked for more than three days without water before Bedouin rescued him.
In exile in New York, Saint-Exupéry published The Little Prince with his own illustrations — translated into hundreds of languages, one of the most-read books in the world.
Back as an Allied reconnaissance pilot, Saint-Exupéry took off from Corsica to photograph southern France and never returned. Half a century later his bracelet and the wreck of his plane were found off Marseille.
French airmail pilot and friend of Saint-Exupéry who crash-landed in the Andes in 1930 and survived by walking for five days
The airmail pilot who crossed the Sahara and the Andes, survived a crash in the desert, wrote The Little Prince and vanished over the Mediterranean