Studio saint exupery biography summary

Salvadoran-French writer and artist (1901–1979)

Consuelo, comtesse de Saint-Exupéry (née Suncín de Sandoval; 10 April 1901 – 28 May 1979), was a Salvadoran-French writer and artist, and was married to the French aristocrat, writer and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Early life

Born Consuelo Suncín de Sandoval as the daughter of a rich coffee grower and army reservist, she grew up in a family of wealthy landowners in a small town in the Salvadoran department of Sonsonate. Due to her asthma, her father sent her abroad to the United States, where she studied in San Francisco; later she studied in Mexico City, and France.

Personal life

Her first marriage was to a Mexican army captain, Ricardo Cárdenas, whom she met in the United States. Though this marriage ended in divorce, she lied and said it ended with his death during the Mexican Revolution, since divorced women were then stigmatized by society, and being a widow was preferable to being a divorced woman. While in France, she met and later married Enrique Gómez Carrillo, a Guatemalan writer, diplomat and journalist. Following his death in 1927, she took up residence in Buenos Aires.

In 1931 in Buenos Aires, she met and married the French aristocrat, writer and pioneering aviator Count Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, making her a countess. At the time Consuelo was a once-divorced, once-widowed Salvadoran writer and artist who possessed a bohemian spirit and was known as a mischief-maker. Saint-Exupéry, thoroughly enchanted by the diminutive woman, wou

French writer and aviator (1900-1944)

Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, vicomte de Saint-Exupéry (29 June 1900 – c. 31 July 1944), known simply as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (,,French:[ɑ̃twandəsɛ̃t‿ɛɡzypeʁi]), was a French writer, poet, journalist and aviator.

Saint-Exupéry trained as a commercial pilot in the early decades of 1920s, working airmail routes across Europe, Africa, and South America. Between 1926 and 1939, four of his literary works were published: the short story The Aviator, novels Southern Mail and Night Flight, and the memoir Wind, Sand and Stars. Saint-Exupéry joined the French Air Force for World War II and flew reconnaissance missions until France's armistice with Germany in 1940. Being demobilised by the Air Force, Saint-Exupéry lived in exile in the United States between 1941 and 1943 and helped persuade it to enter the war. During this time, his works Flight to Arras and The Little Prince were published.

Saint-Exupéry joined the Free French Air Force in 1943, despite being past the maximum age as a war pilot and in declining health. During a reconnaissance mission over Corsica on 31 July 1944, Saint-Exupéry's plane disappeared: it is presumed to have crashed.^[6&

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Studio Saint-Ex
By Ania Szado
Viking
368 pp; $30

Few fictionalizations of the famous (the novelistic equivalent of a biopic) can seem designed to chase the sales of scented-candle bookstores as flagrantly as one devoted to polymath adventurer and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and his internationally famous book Le Petit Prince. “Saint Ex” was not just European, but French, and not just an artist but also a fearless pilot. He lived around the world, then went missing attempting to liberate France during the Second World War. Even more marketable, his most famous book, Le Petit Prince, courts childhood nostalgia and is accessible to people who know enough French to read with the taste of children, not adults.

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