Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was a French writer and aviator, best known for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince), and his books about aviation adventures, including Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars.

Saint-Exupéry was born to an aristocratic family in Lyon, France. He trained as a commercial pilot in the early 1920s, working airmail routes across Europe, Africa, and South America. Between 1926 and 1939, several of his literary works were published, including the short story The Aviator, novels Southern Mail and Night Flight, and the memoir Wind, Sand and Stars.

With the outbreak of World War II, Saint-Exupéry joined the French Air Force, flying reconnaissance missions until the armistice with Germany in 1940. After being demobilised, he lived in exile in the United States from 1941 to 1943, where he wrote Flight to Arras and The Little Prince.

Despite being past the maximum age for a war pilot and in declining health, he returned to combat by joining the Free French Air Force in 1943. On 31 July 1944, during a reconnaissance mission over Corsica, Saint-Exupéry's plane disappeared. Debris from the wreckage was discovered near Marseille in 2000, but the cause of the crash remains unknown.