Papillon - Henri Charriere [Qwerty80]

Release Date: August 1, 2006[reprint][EPUB]



Henri Charrière, called "Papillon," for the butterfly tattoo on his chest, was convicted in Paris in 1931 of a murder he did not commit. Sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, he became obsessed with one goal: escape. After planning and executing a series of treacherous yet failed attempts over many years, he was eventually sent to the notorious prison, Devil's Island, a place from which no one had ever escaped . . . until Papillon. His flight to freedom remains one of the most incredible feats of human cunning, will, and endurance ever undertaken.

Charrière's astonishing autobiography, Papillon, was published in France to instant acclaim in 1968, more than twenty years after his final escape. Since then, it has become a treasured classic -- the gripping, shocking, ultimately uplifting odyssey of an innocent man who would not be defeated.




Excerpt from Introduction

In July 1967, Charrière went to the French bookshop in Caracas and bought L’Astragale. Until then it had never occurred to him to write a line about his own adventures.

He was a man of action who loved life. He had great warmth, a sharp eye and the rich and somewhat gravelly voice of a man from the Midi. You can listen to him for hours because he tells stories like—well, like all the great storytellers. Thus the miracle happened: following the example of Albertine Sarrazin, with no contacts and free of any literary ambition (in his letter to me he said, “Here are my adventures: have a professional write them up”), he wrote the way you tell a story. You see him, you feel him, you live his life, and if it’s your bad luck to have to stop at the bottom of a page just when he’s telling you that he’s about to go to the toilets (a place that has a multiple and important function in the bagne), you find yourself forced to turn the page because it’s no longer Charrière who is going there, but you yourself.



Three days after he had finished reading L’Astragale, he wrote at: one sitting the first two sections in a student’s spiral notebook. He stopped long enough to get some advice about this new adventure—probably more astonishing to him than all the others that had come before; then at the start of 1968 launched into the rest.


In two months he had finished all thirteen notebooks."