Le petit prince
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry · first published 1943
50% recommend50% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Short, simply written fable that readers return to at different life stages, with its layered ideas about human nature; often recommended for language learners reading it alongside an English translation.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Le Petit Prince est une œuvre de langue française, la plus connue d'Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Publié en 1943 à New York simultanément à sa traduction anglaise, c'est une œuvre poétique et philosophique sous l'apparence d'un conte pour enfants. Traduit en quatre cent cinquante-sept langues et dialectes, Le Petit Prince est le deuxième ouvrage le plus traduit au monde après la Bible. Le langage, simple et dépouillé, parce qu'il est destiné à être compris par des enfants, est en réalité pour le narrateur le véhicule privilégié d'une conception symbolique de la vie. Chaque chapitre relat
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I learned more French from a day of trying to read Le Petit Prince in French, with the English translation beside, than I did from 3 months of Duolingo. Rote learning just doesn't work that well for most people.
on “‘Saluton’: the surprise return of Esperanto” ↗…few hundred words each, and think they’re truly great. Can they do as much as a stompin’ big novel? Can they do the same things? Nah, but I mean hell, how many stuffy literature teachers have assigned Le Petit Prince? More than zero, and with good reason. I’ll gladly read Madeline solo, slowly, drinking in the words and pictures, and kinda meditate on life—that thing’s a whole mood. Good shit. Not everything with…
on “TikTok is changing the way books are recommended and sold” ↗…tail, but the details obviously vary). Right now, my least favorite thing about the French book market is the near-impossibility of buying French-language ebooks from overseas, assuming I want more than Le Petit Prince or a bunch of public domain classics. The only French publishing niche that has this figured out is long-form comics (aka bandes dessinées). There, the publishers banded together to create the massively…
on “Amazon snubs French free delivery ban with one-cent charge” ↗All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it. - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "Le Petit Prince." While I love de Saint-Exupéry generally, even in his time (especially?), he knew that not all children got to be children. Hell, I think even in his childhood, he never really got to be a child. The…
on “All grown-ups were once children, but only few of them remember it” ↗