Despite some flaws of character and a style of writing that descends here and there into occasional egotistical self-approval, one cannot help agreeing with the friends of Papillon who declare him worthy of loyalty and every help in his escape attempts. by the strength of character displayed by the author (admittedly not always a character to be unreservedly liked), by the mad adventures he undertook, and by the amazing richness of a life that a court tried to throw into a hole and forget about.There is something so fundamentally heartening about Papillon’s refusal to remain incarcerated for a crime he did not commit (though he ends his tale by admitting that he was a character ripe to be accused of it) that his escape attempts, his adventures, his successes and failures can only be followed with a mixture of – if not always approval – admiration and whole-hearted hope that things should end well for him. Remarkable true taleI was blown away by this book.
Henri Charrière died in 1973 at the age of 66. It is also one of the most vivid stories of human endurance ever written. Papillon is filled with tension, adventure and high excitement. In thirteen years he made nine daring escapes, living through many fantastic adventures while on the run – including a sojourn with South American Indians whose women Papillon found welcomely free of European restraints… No one had ever escaped from this notorious prison – no one until Papillon took to the shark-infested sea supported only by a makeshift coconut-sack raft. Recaptured, he went into solitary confinement and was sent eventually to Devil’s Island, a hell-hole of disease and brutality. Forty-two days after his arrival he made his first break, travelling a thousand gruelling miles in an open boat.
A classic memoir of prison breaks and adventure – a bestselling phenomenon of the 1960sĬondemned for a murder he had not committed, Henri Charrière (nicknamed Papillon) was sent to the penal colony of French Guiana.
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