The little prince

Written during World War II, The Little Prince tells of the friendship between the narrator, an aviator stranded in the Sahara desert, and a mysterious boy whom he encounters there. Ruler of a tiny asteroid of which he is the only inhabitant, the Little Prince chats disarmingly about his curious adventures in space and since arriving on earth; of his distant home and of his love for a beautiful and capricious rose, to whom he longs to return. A moving and deceptively simple tale, it was described by Saint-Exupéry as a children's story for adults, and it works on several levels as an allegory of his own life, or of the human condition. Children love it for its deadpan fantasy, for its sense of amused bafflement at the grown-up world and for the author's attractive watercolour illustrations which are an integral part of the book.