The Little Prince/Ο Μικρός Πρίγκιπας

Last crawled date: 10 months, 2 weeks ago

The Little Prince (French: Le Petit Prince), first published in 1943, is a novella, the most famous work of French aristocrat, writer, poet, and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The novella is one of the most-translated books in the world and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France. Translated into 300 languages and dialects, selling nearly two million copies annually, and with year-to-date sales of over 140 million copies worldwide, it has become one of the best-selling books ever published. Now an adult himself, the narrator has become a pilot, and, one day, his plane crashes in the Sahara, far from civilization. Here, the narrator is greeted by a young boy whom he refers to as 'the little prince'. Upon encountering the narrator, the little prince asks him to draw a sheep. The narrator first shows him his old picture of the elephant inside the snake, which, to the narrator's surprise, the prince interprets correctly. After three failed attempts at drawing a sheep, the frustrated narrator simply draws a box, claiming that there is a sheep inside the box. Again, to the narrator's surprise, the prince exclaims that this is exactly the drawing he wanted. The prince has a strange habit of avoiding directly answering any of the narrator's questions. The prince is described as wearing a scarf and having golden hair and a lovable laugh. Over the course of eight days stranded in the desert, while the narrator attempts to repair his plane, the little prince recounts the story of his life, an account that is often triggered by his preoccupation with the sheep. The prince begins by describing life on his tiny home planet: in effect, an asteroid the size of a house (the asteroid was 'named' B-612 by people on Earth, but the Prince called it 'asteroid 325'; a real asteroid was named after the fictional asteroid). The asteroid's most prominent features are three minuscule volcanoes (two active, and one dormant or extinct) as well as a variety of plants. The prince describes spending his earlier days cleaning the volcanoes and weeding unwanted seeds and sprigs that infest his planet's soil; in particular, pulling out baobab trees that are constantly on the verge of overrunning the surface. 'Catastrophe' the little prince would call it. The prince wants a sheep to eat the undesirable plants, but is warned by the narrator that a sheep might also eat roses with thorns. Upon hearing this, the prince tells of his love for a mysterious rose that began growing on the asteroid's surface some time ago. The prince says he nourished the rose and listened to her when she told him to make a screen or glass globe to protect her from the cold wind. Although the prince fell in love with the rose, he also began to feel that she was taking advantage of him, and he resolved to leave the planet to explore the rest of the universe. Although the rose finally apologized for her vanity and the two reconciled, she encouraged him to go ahead with his journey. The prince misses his rose and claims that he only needs to look at the millions of stars to be reminded of his rose, since his rose is on one of them. #Little_Prince, #asteroid