Papillon (1960s A Series) - Softcover

Charri�re, Henri

4.23

69,787 ratings by Goodreads

9780007115242: Papillon (1960s A Series)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007115245 ISBN 13: 9780007115242

Publisher: Flamingo, 2001

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A classic memoir of prison breaks and adventure – a bestselling phenomenon of the 1960s

Condemned for a murder he had not committed, Henri Charriere (nicknamed Papillon) was sent to the penal colony of French Guiana. Forty-two days after his arrival he made his first break, travelling a thousand gruelling miles in an open boat. Recaptured, he suffered a solitary confinement and was sent eventually to Devil’s Island, a hell-hole of disease and brutality. 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. 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...

Papillon is filled with tension, adventure and high excitement. It is also one of the most vivid stories of human endurance ever written.

Henri Charriere died in 1973 at the age of 66.

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From the Back Cover:

"A literary prodigy. Merely having been a transported convict and having escaped does not mean a thing: you have to have talent to give this tale a ring of truth."
LE FIGARO

'I looked closely at the cell they had put me into. I should never have imagined or believed a country like mine a country like France, could possibly possess an establishment of such barbarous repression as the saint-Joseph solitary confinement prison... At once there came to me a thought, "Here, in cell 234, Charriere, nicknamed Papillon, is going to try and live through a sentence of two years, or seven hundred and thirty days, without going mad.'

"This book is an account of Papillon's astonishing escapes, but it is also savagely contemptuous of the Establishment... Indeed, we have a minister's word for it that the present hopeless moral decline of France is due to the wearing of mini-skirts and to the reading of Papillon."
PATRICK O'BRIAN

Synopsis:

Condemned for a murder he had not committed, Henri Charriere (nicknamed Papillon) was sent to the penal colony of French Guiana. Forty-t wo days after his arrival he made his first break, travelling a thousand gruelling miles in an open boat. Recaptured, he suffered a solitary confinement and was sent eventually to Devil's Island, a hell-hole of disease and brutality. 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. In 13 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. This book is Henry Charriere's memoir of prison breaks and adventure.

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