The world-famous television and radio reporter, Czech publicist and writer has now published another book from the literature of facts. It is a documentary work to which the author has devoted three decades of his life. Yes, How I Searched for the Little Prince is the result of a quarter of a century of Motl's search not only in Europe, but also in Africa, for example.
A journey through the adventurous world of Antoine de Sant-Exupéri
This four-hundred-page book with a huge number of unique images, including period photographs, describes why and how Stanislav Motl followed in the footsteps of the great French writer and his work, introducing us to this personality in detail. This journalistic disciple of the famous war reporter Jiří Mucha (the only Czechoslovak journalist to serve as a correspondent on the Western Front during World War II) has done his job admirably.
With Motl's proverbial consistency, perseverance, creative humility and objectivity, Euromedia presents the life story of the author of the legendary The Little Prince, a book that has been translated into more than 500 languages and dialects, as we can read in the annotation on the back cover. It has sold more than 140 million copies worldwide, as the collector Marie Čadková confirms at the end of the book, who has more than 1,300 volumes in her collection, the largest collection of The Little Prince books in the Czech Republic!
Stanislav Motl, known in the media as the information hunter, is a reporter who goes to meet the journalist's luck, so to speak. When he takes up a new subject, he follows the trail steadily, even for years, as his admirable work, still smelling of printer's ink, testifies. Every fact, event or memory of a witness that is discovered triggers an avalanche of other subsequently emerging interesting facts, which then turn into a complete picture of a complex mosaic.
Writer and wartime pilot
Before we read Motl's work itself, let's refresh our knowledge from our school literature classes. The Little Prince was written and published during the war in 1943. Its author, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, was also known for his work for adults (Night Flight, The Land of Men, The Citadel, etc.). The fairy tale, intended not only for children, contains deep philosophical ideas about friendship, love, responsibility and the meaning of life.
The book was published in its first edition with simple and delicate illustrations by the author of the text, in which form it is still known today, and tells the story of Exupéry himself, who crash-lands in the Sahara and there meets the character of the Little Prince, who has come here from a distant planet. Until recently, the Czech media claimed that the death of the author of The Little Prince in 1944 was shrouded in mystery. What caused his end?
Shot down by the enemy or technical failure during an observation flight and subsequent crash into the sea? Medical indisposition or perhaps suicide from a sudden movement of the mind? Thanks to Stanislav Motl, this is no longer the case! After all, he personally interviewed the German fighter Horst Rippert, who told him, among other things: "Yes, it was I who shot down Saint-Exupéry..." But now let us return to Motl's journey through the world of adventure in the footsteps of the famous downed writer.
Eighty stops of content...
...chapters and sections of varying lengths are framed by nine numbered blocks enticingly entitled What the Sea Hid. Motl's evocative foreword, The Well of Life, is followed by a citation of Major Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's In Memoriam appointment in an Air Force order on 8 March 1950, with the award of the 1939-1945 War Cross with Palm Branch. And the real thriller awaits the reader from the chapter The Mystery of the Last Night.
Things start to take a turn for the worse after the accidental discovery of a military chain bracelet with the blackened identification tag of an Exuperi pilot. It had been lying on the seabed for more than fifty years and its discovery was just the right challenge for reporter Motl, who went into action with a vengeance. He's been roaming the world and the archives, contacting researchers of all kinds. He visits all available places where the object of his search has been - not only in Paris, for example, but above all in Sardinia (chapter On the Island of the Shepherds). He researches in the unique Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Museum in Porto Conte, where he is assisted by Massimilano Flos, historian, researcher, writer and co-founder of the museum. Last but not least, he contacts and interviews, for example, the still living German pilot who shot down the author of The Little Prince!!!
One chapter after another of Motl's manuscript describes how he gathers information of all kinds, discovers, summarizes. Motlovsky intersperses the text with all sorts of interesting facts and observations, all in a readable, literary language. In writing, he alternates between the so-called ich form and third-person texts, all the while not denying the television reporter, and the text has an almost cinematic pace. As we have already said, the work took thirty long years. Until October 2025, when the result of his many years of interest is published in book form. The breadth of the author's painstaking work is evidenced, among other things, by the four-page bibliography of admirable footage from domestic and foreign sources.
Curriculum vitae
Stanislav Motl (born in 1952) is a reporter known, among others, from the popular TV show Na vlastní oči. According to the Internet glossary Wikipedia, he is a first-class Czech documentary filmmaker, traveller and collector of adrenaline experiences on various sporting expeditions. He is currently the author of the unique radio documentary series Traces, Facts, Secrets, which recently received 550 sequels. Stanislav Motl has published three dozen books to date. Although he is considered to be the author of publications mainly on the subject of the Second World War, where he has also dealt with Nazi war criminals, 15 of whom he personally tracked down, his literary experiences include those of the seas or the mountains. He also explores various mysteries, including literary ones. He has won numerous awards for his work. In 2010, for example, it was a major award from the Association of International Broadcasters in London. This award, which is considered a radio Oscar, was also won a year later, also for the radio series Traces, Facts, Secrets. In the Czech Republic, he was awarded the prestigious prize in 2003 for the documentary film Nazis Under Protection and the main prize of the festival of Czech-German-Jewish culture Nine Gates for his book of the same name. He is also the recipient of the E. E. Kisch Main Prize and the Miroslav Ivanov Prize for lifetime achievement in non-fiction.
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Ivan Cerny
A wartime aviator and a famous writer in one person
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