Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Who is Antoine de Saint-Exupery

• Saint-Exupery, Antoine de (1900-1944), was a French writer and aviator. He is best known for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince), and for his books about aviation adventures, including Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars.
• He was a successful commercial pilot before World War II, 
• He joined the Armée de l'Air (French Air Force) on the outbreak of war.
• He disappeared on a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean in July 1944.

Early life

• Antoine de Saint Exupéry was born in Lyon to an old family of provincial nobility, the third of five children of Marie de Fonscolombe and Viscount Jean de Saint Exupéry, an insurance broker who died before his son was even four.
• After failing his final exams at preparatory school, Saint-Exupéry entered the École des Beaux-Arts to study architecture.
• In 1921, Saint Exupery began his military service with the 2nd Regiment of Chasseurs (light cavalry), and was then sent to Strasbourg for training as a pilot. 
• The following year, he obtained his license and was offered transfer to the air force. 
• He became one of the pioneers of international postal flight, in the days when aircraft had few instruments.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Crash

On 30 December 1935 at 14:45 after a flight of 19 hours and 38 minutes Saint-Exupéry, along with his navigator, André Prévot, crashed in the Libyan Sahara desert en route to Saigon.They survived the crash and Exupéry's fable The Little Prince, which begins with a pilot being marooned in the desert, is in part a reference to this experience.

Selected books

• L'aviateur (The Aviator, 1926)
• Courrier sud (Southern Mail, 1929)
• Vol de nuit (Night Flight, 1931) 
• Terre des Hommes (Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939)
• Pilote de Guerre (Flight to Arras, 1942 )
• Lettre à un Otage (Letter to a Hostage, 1943) 
• Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince, 1943)
• Citadelle (The Wisdom of the Sands, posthumous - 1948),

who is Tahar Benjeloun?

Tahar Benjeloun is a Moroccan novelist and poet. The entirety of his work is written in French, although his first language is Arabic.

Early life and studies

• Tahar benjeloun was born in Fes on December 1st, 1944.
• After first having attended the local coranic school, he switched to the bilingual (French-Moroccan) primary school the age of 6.
• Ben Jalloun studied French in Tangier, Morocco until he was 18 years old.
• He obtained my baccalaureate in 1963 and continued his studies in philosophy at Mohammed-V University in Rabat.
• On March 23, 1965 because of student demonstrations in larger Moroccan cities there were a lot of repression and arrests.
• On July 1966 his philosophy studies were interrupted; he was sent to a disciplinary camp run by the army together with 94 other students suspected of having organized the March 65 demonstrations.
• In January 1968, he was liberated and returned to university.
• In October 1968 he got his first teaching assignment. The same year he published his first poem “l’Aube des dalles” in the magazine “Souffles”. He wrote the poem in secret at the camp.
• After this point, he worked as a teacher in Morocco, teaching philosophy first in Tetouan and then in Casablanca. 
• Then he left teaching after the arabization of the philosophy department, unable or unwilling to teach in Arabic. He moved to Paris to continue his studies in psychology, and began to write more extensively. 
• Starting in 1972, he began to write articles and reviews for the French newspaper [Le Monde], and in 1975 he received his doctorate in social psychiatry. Using his experience with psychotherapy as both a reference and an inspiration, he wrote the book La Réclusion solitaire in 1976.
• n 1985 he published the novel "L'Enfant de sable," which was widely celebrated. He won the Prix Goncourt in 1987 for his novel La Nuit Sacrée. 
• In 1997 he saw his novel Le Racisme expliqué à ma fille published, wherein he "explains racism to his daughter," using his family as inspiration for his novels. Ben Jalloun is regularly asked to give speeches and lectures at universities worldwide - both in Morocco, and all over Europe.
• In 2004 he was awarded the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for This Blinding Absence of Light (translated from the French by Linda Coverdale). He was rewarded the Prix Ulysse in 2005 for the entirety of his work
• In September 2006, he was awarded a special prize for "peace and friendship between people" at Lazio between Europe and the Mediterranean Festival.
• On 1 February 2008, Nicolas Sarkozy awarded him the Cross of Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur.
• Ben Jelloun is married and father of 4 children. He lives in Paris.
• In his novel, Leaving Tangier, Ben Jelloun writes about a Moroccan brother and sister who leave their impoverished home in search of better lives in Spain.
• His novels L'Enfant de sable and La Nuit sacrée are translated into 43 languages. Le racism expliqué à ma fille has been translated into 33 languages. He has participated in translating many of his works.  

Selected works

• Solitaire (1976)
• The Sand Child (1985)
• The Sacred Night (1987)
• Silent Day in Tangiers (1990)
• With Downcast Eyes (1991)
• Corruption (1995)
• The Fruits of Hard Work (1996)
• Praise of Friendship (1996)
• L'Auberge des pauvres, (1997)
• Racism Explained to My Daughter (1998)
• Islam Explained (2002)
• This Blinding Absence of Light (2003)
• La Belle au bois dormant, (2004)
• The last friend, (2006)
• Yemma, (2007)
• Leaving Tangier, (2009)
• The Rising of the Ashes, (2009)

Source:Wikipedia and Tahar Benjelloun's official site

Barack Hussein Obama

Early life

• Barack Obama was born to a white American mother, Ann Dunham, and a black Kenyan father, Barack Obama Sr.
• They were both young college students at the University of Hawaii. 
• When his father left for Harvard, Barack Obama and his mother stayed behind
• His father ultimately returned alone to Kenya, where he worked as a government economist. 
• Barack's mother remarried an Indonesian oil manager and moved to Jakarta when Barack was six. 
• He later recounted Indonesia as simultaneously lush and poor.
• He returned to Hawaii, where he was brought up largely by his grandparents. 
• The family lived in a small apartment - his grandfather was a furniture salesman and an unsuccessful insurance agent and his grandmother worked in a bank.
• Barack managed to get into Punahou School, Hawaii's top prep academy. 
• His father wrote to him regularly but, though he traveled around the world on official business for Kenya, he visited only once, when Barack was ten.

University and Politics

• Obama attended Columbia University, where he majored in political science with a specialty in international relations and graduated with a B.A. in 1983.
• After four years in New York City, Obama was hired in Chicago as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland  on Chicago's far South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1985 to May 1988
• He spent these three years helping poor South Side residents cope with a wave of plant closings.
• He then attended Harvard Law School, and in 1990 became the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. 
• He also began teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, and married Michelle Robinson, a fellow attorney. 
• Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois's 13th District, which at that time spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park – Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn

President

• In 2004 Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, representing Illinois, and he gained national attention by giving a rousing and well-received keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. 
• On February 10, 2007, Obama announced his candidacy for president of the United States in front of the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois The choice of the announcement site was viewed as symbolic because it was also where Abraham Lincoln delivered his historic "House Divided" speech in 1858. Throughout the campaign, Obama emphasized the issues of rapidly ending the Iraq War, increasing energy independence and providing universal health care.
• A large number of candidates entered the Democratic Party presidential primaries. The field narrowed to a duel between Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
• On June 3, with all states counted, Obama was named the presumptive nominee and delivered a victory speech in St. Paul, Minnesota. Clinton ended her campaign and endorsed him on June 7, 2008.
• Obama proceeded to focus on the general election campaign against Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
• Barack Obama won the race for presidency. In January 2009, he was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, and the first African-American ever elected to that position.

Gabriel García Márquez

 

Gabriel García Márquez

• Gabriel García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist.  
• García Márquez, affectionately known as Gabo throughout Latin America, is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. 

Early life

• Gabriel José de la Concordia "Gabo" García Márquez was born March 6, 1927.
• When his parents fell in love, their relationship met with resistance from Luisa Santiaga Marquez's father, the Colonel. 
• Gabriel Eligio García was not the man the Colonel had envisioned winning the heart of his daughter: he (Gabriel Eligio) was a Conservative, and had the reputation of being a womanizer.
• He was brought up by his grandparents who had an important influence on his education.
  

Success

• In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha; they have two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.
•  He pursued a self-directed education that resulted in his leaving law school for a career in journalism.
•  He started as a journalist, and has written many acclaimed non-fiction works and short stories, but is best-known for his novels, such as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985).
• From early on, he showed no inhibitions in his criticism of Colombian and foreign politics.
• Gabriel García Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. 
• His works have achieved significant critical acclaim and widespread commercial success, most notably for popularizing a literary style labeled as magical realism, which uses magical elements and events in otherwise ordinary and realistic situations. 
• Some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo, and most of them express the theme of solitude.

Illness

• Gabriel García Márquez was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1999. 
• His impeding death was was incorrectly announced by Peruvian daily newspaper in 2000. 
• Later newspapers published Garcia Marquez’s alleged farewell poem, “La Marioneta” (“the puppet”). 
• However shortly afterwards García Márquez denied being the author of the poem. 
• In fact, it was was the work of a Mexican ventriloquist. The poem is republished below. I think it may constitute a very good piece of material to teach English.

Works

Novels

• In Evil Hour 1962
• One Hundred Years of Solitude 1967
• The Autumn of the Patriarch 1975
• Love in the Time of Cholera 1985
• The General in His Labyrinth 1989
• Of Love and Other Demons 1994

Novellas

• Leaf Storm 1955
• No One Writes to the Colonel published 1961 in Spanish (written in 1956-1957)
• Chronicle of a Death Foretold 1981
• Memories of My Melancholy Whores 2004

Short Story Collections

• Innocent Eréndira, and Other Stories 1978
• Collected Stories 1984
• Strange Pilgrims 1993

Non Fiction

• The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor 1970
• The Solitude of Latin America 1982
• The Fragrance of Guava 1982, with Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza
• Clandestine in Chile 1986
• News of a Kidnapping 1996
• A Country for Children 1998
• Living to Tell the Tale 2002

Related Links about Gabriel García Márquez

• Wikipedia
• Gabriel García Márquez - Alleged poem

Who is Lionel Andrés Messi?

Lionel Andrés Messi

• Lionel Andrés Messi was born on June 24th 1987.
• He is an Argentine footballer who currently plays for Barcelona and the Argentine national team. 
• He is one of the best football players of his generation.
• Lionel Messi is frequently considered as the world's best contemporary player. 
• Lionel Messi, whose playing style and ability have drawn comparisons to Diego Maradona, received Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year nominations by the age of 21 and won both by the age of 22.  
• Diego Maradona once declared that Messi was his "successor."

Early life

• Lionel Messi's talent was early detected by his father. When he began playing with the local team, his potential was quickly identified by Barcelona . 
• At the age of 11, he was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency, which is a medical condition in which the body does not produce enough growth hormone and whose treatment nessecitates a lot of money.

Barcelona

• He left Rosario-based Newell's Old Boys's youth team in 2000 and moved with his family to Europe, as Barcelona offered treatment for his growth hormone deficiency. 
• Making his debut in the 2004–05 season, he broke the La Liga record for the youngest footballer to play a league game, and also the youngest to score a league goal. 
• Major honours soon followed as Barcelona won La Liga in Messi's debut season, and won a double of the league and Champions League in 2006. 
• His breakthrough season was in 2006–07; he became a first team regular, scoring a hat-trick in El Clásico and finishing with 14 goals in 26 league games. 
• Perhaps his most successful season was the 2008–09 season, in which Messi scored 38 goals to play an integral part in a treble-winning campaign.

Success

• Messi was the top scorer of the 2005 FIFA World Youth Championship with six goals, including two in the final game. 
• Shortly thereafter, he became an established member of Argentina's senior international team. 
• In 2006, he became the youngest Argentine to play in the FIFA World Cup and he won a runners-up medal at the Copa América tournament the following year. 
• In 2008, in Beijing, he won his first international honour, an Olympic gold medal, with the Argentina Olympic football team.

Source: Wikipedia