Saint-Exupery’s popular children’s book The Little Prince is also read by adults for its allegorical meaning. Later works, including Wind, Sand and Stars and Flight to Arras, stress his humanistic philosophy. His first two books, Southern Mail and Night Flight, are distinguished by a poetic evocation of the romance and discipline of flying. Writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-44), was born in Lyon, France. This book explores the transcendent perceptions that arise when life is tested to its limits. ‘Self-discovery comes when a man measures himself against an obstacle,’ writes Saint-Exupery. Interweaving encounters with nomadic Arabs and other adventures into a richly textured autobiographical narrative, it has its climax in the extraordinary story of Saint-Exupery’s crash in the Libyan Desert in 1936, and his miraculous survival. Wind, Sand and Stars is drawn from this experience. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is translated from the French with an introduction by William Rees.In 1926 de Saint-Exupery began flying for the pioneering airline Lateco re – later known as Aeropostale – opening up the first mail routes across the Sahara and the Andes. Both a gripping tale of adventure and a poetic meditation, Antoine de Saint Exupery’s Wind, Sand and Stars is the lyrical autobiography of an aviation pioneer, from the author of The Little Prince.

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