The Little Prince - By Saint Exupery
Book Review : Mabel Annie Chacko (25/12/05)
This little book is certainly one of the best-known and most popular in French literature. Though at heart a children's story, it is rightly considered a classic in its own sense and is even found within respected French literary anthologies. Most bookstores carry this French novella in their children's section. I can understand why this is the case: the book is less than one hundred pages, the sentences are simple and flow with an easy, poetic grace, and interspersed with the clear text are more than forty watercolor pen-and-ink pictures drawn with a childlike gravity that is yet meticulously detailed - as fine a masquerade of children's literature as was ever created. But make no mistake - it is a masquerade; for, while a proper reading of this book requires a child's faith, acceptance, and willingness to make a complete suspension of disbelief, this story, difficult to define, comes closer to philosophy than to anything else. What is amazing is the fact that this novel has been translated into more than 58 languages of which five are Indian languages like hindi, gujarati, malayalam,bengali and tamil.
The book, illustrated by the author himself, is the story of an Airman's discovery of a small boy ('The Little Prince') from another planet right in the middle of the great sahara desert. The Little Prince recounts his intergalactic travels where he meets kings, conceited men, drunkards, businessmen and lamplighters. All these 'types' of people have some characteristic or the other which the author uses to parody adults. According to Saint-Exupery, all grown-ups fall in one of these categories. The Little Prince's stories only reinforce the Airman's view that all grown-ups are very odd and that they are only concerned with themselves.
The story can basically be split into two parts: The first part is the short introduction dealing with the narrator and his view of the world when he was a child and how adults could never understand the real meaning of things or perceive truth in the world--only the superficial and the usual.The rest of the book is the story of the little prince, whom the narrator discovers in the Sahara when he is trying to fix his downed airplane and is in fear of his life. The narrator and the reader slowly come to know the prince's story and learn about friendship, love and truth in a touching way. . With his new level of understanding, the Little Prince is at last ready to return home, but not before he passes on his new knowledge to the author - knowledge of the healing power of love which makes all things unique, and how the pain of saying goodbye is worth it if it changes how we look at the world.
Saint Exupery was a World War II French pilot. He has written many famous works like "Vol de Nuit", "Le Petit Prance" (i.e. this book The little Prince )etc. and are rated as the best novellas in French Literature and also in the world at large.His likeness, along with that of the little prince and his pet lamb and the famous drawing of the elephant in the boa-constrictor: all which are available in this book, are all on the French 50 Franc note.
My favorite parts are those dealing with the prince's relationship with his beloved rose left on his planet and the prince's relationship with the wise little fox, who offers the prince his philosophical secret on life. Having read the novel in both its original French version "Le Petit Prance" and in English "The Little Prince", I personally feel that it is a job well done both on the part of the author Saint Exupery and by Katerine Woods who translated it into English.
I'd like to close with a quote from the book's own jacket copy:
"There are a few stories which in some way, in some degree, change the world forever for their readers. This is one."
