75th Anniversary of “Le Petit Prince”

This article is about one of the most famous French writers, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and probably the most famous French book, “Le Petit Prince”.

I was actually astonished to discover two fascinating things related to “Le Petit Prince” ,aka “The Little Prince” in English.

First thing is that the book was in fact first published in the United States, not in France. For the true fans of de Saint-Exupéry it might be something extremely trivial, as they all probably know that this was where the author went into exile in 1940, after the surrender of France to Nazi Germany. “Le Petit Prince” was subsequently published in 1943 in New York and in both French and English.

It officially appeared  in the writer’s native homeland only in 1946, after the liberation of France, the abolition of Vichy Regime’s ban of his works, and of course, sadly, only after Saint-Exupéry’s mysterious death.

Even so, this appears to be even more complicated than that.  You normally won’t find 1946 date on the Little Prince’s webpage of the English Wikipedia unless you go the “notes” section. If you are curious, I invite you to go and have a look, you will learn there some other interesting things too.

The second thing is the fact the “Le Petit Prince” is the second most translated book in the entire world! Period. Do you know which one comes first? The Bible. How amazing is that? If you like books, you may also find interesting to know that Exupéry’s book has been competing for this 2nd place with Carlo Colodi’s “The Adventures of Pinocchio“, and the sources vary on the subject.

And the 75th anniversary of the “official” French publication of “Le Petit Prince” was on the 6th of April. I know, I’m 5 days late. But hey, the French “La Poste” (French postal service) has issued a stamp to honor this exceptional book. That’s how I found out about the anniversary.

I decided to honor “Le Petit Prince” and de Saint-Exupéry by a simple quiz about the book and its eminent author.

All the information has been taken from the French Wikipedia about the book. You may read it first (the introduction) and then come back here and try to answer the questions. Or try to get straight to the questions. Good luck.