Letter to a Hostage is a book by the author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Saint-Exupéry initially wrote this piece as a preface for his best friend, Léon Werth's novel: Trente-trois jours (Thirty Three Days). Werth had been forced to take refuge in the Jura region of France during the autumn of 1940 because of his Jewish origins. His book, however, could not be published, and so the author significantly revised his preface, removing any direct references to his friend and making him anonymous within the text and a symbol for France as the hostage of the occupying forces.