Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900 - 1944), The Little Prince at the Well from the series The Little Prince, 2023 (1943)

Color lithograph, Arches velin paper with watermark ; 40 x 30 cm, facsimile of author's signature p.d., dry license stamp l.d.: "SUCCESSION ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY".

The Little Prince is a universal story about friendship, growing up, shared responsibility and attachment; it has been translated into more than three hundred languages. It is aimed not only at the youngest, as it touches the most tender strings of readers' souls. Such a purpose of the work is also evidenced by the fact that the author dedicated The Little Prince to an adult, his close friend Léon Werth - a French writer, essayist and journalist.

The book was first published in 1943 in New York. It is narrated by a pilot, who can be identified with the author - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was himself an experienced aviator. Also, the description of the Little Prince's appearance alludes to the writer's childhood years, when his family called him "the Sun King" because of his light curly hair. The location of the meeting of the Little Prince and the pilot in the Sahara is also symbolic - in 1935 the author survived an airplane accident while flying from Paris to Saigon in an attempt to break the speed record, and the machine crashed in the desert.

On the tiny asteroid B 612 lives the Little Prince. He spends most of his time cleaning volcanoes and weeding. One day he discovers that a rose has grown on his planet. The boy surrounds it with care - he regularly waters it and shields it from the wind. Unfortunately, the flower does not appreciate his efforts. Discouraged by the behavior of the rose, the Little Prince decides to go on a journey to other planets. On each of them the main character meets various characters, both real and fantastic, who make him reflect on the world and life. The inhabitant of asteroid B 612 also ends up on Earth....

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupéry - French aviator, writer and poet. On the "air route" - over the Sahara, the Andes and the Atlantic, all his books were written.
He was also a correspondent for the French press during the Spanish Civil War. He made his debut with "Post to the South," became famous with "Night Flight" and in 1939 wrote are biggest book "Earth, the planet of men." In his prose he preached the brotherhood of all people, the need for courage, integrity and moral duty. During the war he took part in reconnaissance flights over France and was killed in one such mission. Before that, he wrote the beautiful poetic story The Little Prince (1943) and began work on his life's work, the treatise The Fortress. This book he did not have time to finish; it was published posthumously in 1948.