Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote "The Little Prince" in a matter of months, in exile in New York, homesick for France and for the sky. He was a military pilot, and the sky for him was not a metaphor but a profession.
He was born in Lyon in 1900. As a child he was often ill, slept little, and read through the night. In his early twenties he became a mail pilot — Toulouse, Morocco, Senegal, South America. It was dangerous work: the landmarks were poor, the planes unreliable. "Southern Mail," "Night Flight," "Wind, Sand and Stars" — books about what you feel when the Sahara is below and you are alone in the cockpit.
In 1940 France capitulated, and he left for America. There he wrote "The Little Prince" — a parable about grown-ups who have forgotten how to see what matters, about a rose that had to be cared for, about a fox that was tamed. He did the drawings himself, in watercolor, without much skill — and that was exactly the point.
In 1944 he returned to active service, despite his age and his injuries. On July 31 he took off on a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean and never came back. He was forty-four. What happened is unknown to this day.