“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupéry was born into an aristocratic family in Lyon, France, on June 29, 1900. He was a famous French writer and an aviator whose image is carved in the French literary world as a legend and a cultural hero who merged action with reflection. As a young boy, Antoine possessed and projected an unusual combination of poetic sensibility and mechanical inventiveness. As he grew up, he soon found his vocation as a pilot of a famous airmail line and was promoted to the post of ‘Compagnie Generale Aeropostale’. During his stint as the pilot, he discovered the explorer in himself, and thrived in that atmosphere to emerge as an avid voyager. It was during this period that Antoine began to write again extensively as he found the inspiration in the surroundings and in that desolate area.
Saint-Exupéry nurtured his love of flying at the same time as his love of writing. He published “The Aviator” in 1926. That year he also began flying as a mail pilot for a company in Toulouse. In 1927, he worked in an airfield in the Sahara, and his experiences there formed the basis for his novel “Southern Mail” (1929). Two years in Argentina led to “Night Flight” (1931), a novel that garnered him the Prix Femina literary prize and a Hollywood film adaptation with John Barrymore.
At Grasse, Saint-Exupéry married Consuelo Suncin, a once-divorced, once-widowed Salvadoran writer and artist, who possessed a bohemian spirit and a "viper's tongue". Their marriage was tumultuous, particularly as Saint-Exupéry was often gone. In 1935, he was attempting to break the air-speed record between Paris and Saigon when he crash-landed in the Sahara. He and his copilot barely survived, but a wandering Bedouin saved their lives. Saint-Exupéry wrote a memoir about this, entitled “Wind, Sand and Stars” (1939); it won numerous awards (including the National Book Award in the United States) and was very successful.
The experience in the Sahara also led, of course, to “The Little Prince”. Saint-Exupéry began working on this as the Second World War was heating up. He was a military reconnaissance pilot but had to flee France when the Germans occupied it in 1940. While living in New York, Saint-Exupéry published “The Little Prince”. It was well-received but most of its tremendous fame occurred after his death. The vain and petulant Rose in “The Little Prince” was likely inspired by Saint-Exupéry's Salvadoran wife. Saint-Exupéry wrote and illustrated “The Little Prince” in New York City and the village of Asharoken in mid-to-late 1942, with the manuscript being completed in October.  It would be first published months later in early 1943 in both English and French in the United States, and would only later appear in his native homeland posthumously after the liberation of France, as his works had been banned by the collaborationist Vichy Regime.
In 1943, Saint-Exupéry, now part of the Free French air force based out of North Africa, was anxious to return to his squadron. He left Corsica on July 31, 1844 for a reconnaissance mission but never returned and his plane was never found (wreckage of the pilot’s Lockheed F-5B was found in 2000, and evidence indicates that he was possibly shot down).
Nowadays two monuments are dedicated to Saint-Exupery, both located in Lyon. The first is located on the place Bellecour, next to the street where Saint-Exupery was born, the second - in front of the entrance to the airport named after him.

                                                                                                   Nazira Artykbaeva,
                                                                                                   librarian of the Department of the International Book