Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born in Lyons, France on June 29, 1900. In 1921, Antoine began to serve in the military where he became a pilot. In 1928, Antoine accepted a position as an airfield chief at Cape Juby and began to write his first book called , which was published in 1929. After spending time in Buenos Aires, overseeing the launch of a mail service, he moved back to Paris in 1931, where he published . In 1935, while attempting to break the speed record for flying from Paris to Saigon, his plane crashed in the Libyan Desert and he and his co-pilot trekked through the sand for three days until they could find help. During his time in recovery, Antoine wrote his next novel, , which was published in 1939. The book won the prestigious Académie Française's Grand Prix du Roman (Grand Prize for Novel Writing) award and the National Book Award in the United States. In 1943, Antoine published , which became a global sensation after his death. On July 31st, 1944, he set out from Borgo, Corsica, to fly over occupied France. He never returned