Reception and criticism

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's novella The Little Prince is one of the most widely read works of literature. The work is considered the most translated book in the world after the Bible and the Koran. However, the success of the story did not begin immediately after its first publication in New York on April 6, 1943. 

Shortly before the work appeared, Saint-Exupéry had left for Algiers to rejoin the Second World War as a pilot. He therefore did not personally witness the publication of the book in America. On June 8, he wrote to his publisher that he heard nothing about The Little Prince and did not even know if it had been published at all. Hitchcock replied to him on August 3 that 30,000 copies in English and 7,000 copies in French would soon be s...