‘The Little Prince’ has been inspiring children and adults for 80 years

It is one of the emblematic works of French literature, but “The Little Prince” by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry first appeared in the United States in 1943, that is, 80 years ago.

Admiring this seemingly simple story is not diluted Even today, five million copies are sold annually, according to the Gallimard publishing house, which managed to launch the book in France in 1946.

Since then, he has continued to publish this short novel barely 120 pages admired by readers of all ages and parts of the world, it maintains its editorial success and inspires creators who emphasize its introspective nature.

A novel, the number of copies of which has been sold incalculableit is the second most translated book in the world after the Bible, with the latest in 2022 in the Sephardic Haketí dialect, bringing the number of official translations to 500, according to Gallimard.

The first edition in Spanish was Argentine, 1951. I “The little Prince” It can be read in Friulian, Romansh, Ladino, Palatine, Quechua, Konkani, Esperanto, Venetian, Occitan, Languedoc, Aragonese, Basque, Galician, Catalan and Asturian.

In the text, delicately illustrated by Saint-Exupéry, childhood It is claimed to be an area where the most essential things can be recovered, and the young prince talks about it as he travels through the planets making friends.

“If it has a universal reach, it is because it heals with great simplicity, and at the same time with greatness depth universal themes. Among them, perhaps the one that unites us all, which is childhood, nostalgia for childhood,” Pedro Mañas, author of children’s literature, told EFE.

Originally published by the publisher New York Reynal & Hitchcock April 6, 1943 in English, the work deals with love represented in the fragility of a rose or friendship embodied in a fox that wants to be tamed while teaching humanity in a crisis of values ​​during World War II.

Adventurer and aviator Saint-Exupery wrote novel doc He served as a military pilot from New York and it was not until 1946, after his death in a plane crash in 1944, that the book was published in a Europe already freed from Nazism.

Only then could it be read by Leon Werth, an anarchist and Jewish journalist and writer, to whom the author dedicated the work as his best friend.

The fundamental part of the storytelling is his illustrations, the author’s original watercolors, which today decorate all kinds of advertising items related to the character.

For illustrator María Hesse, it’s “a very naive drawing that gives that throwback aspect.”

The anniversary is remembered by publishers such as Gallimard, which launched a special collector’s edition in a limited edition of 3,000 copies.

Or Salamandra, responsible for its distribution in Spanish since birth, which in March published an interactive children’s book “The Little Prince: Where are you foxes?” and an English-Spanish version of the work.