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Author Charrière, Henri, 1906-1973.

Title Papillon / by Henri Charrière ; with an introduction by Jean-Pierre Castelnau ; translated by June P. Wilson and Walter B. Michaels.

Imprint New York : Morrow, 1970.

Copies

Location Call No. Status
 Glastonbury, Welles-Turner Memorial Library - Adult Department  365.64 CHA    Claims Returned
 New Britain, Main Library - Non Fiction  92 CHARRIERE, HEN    Check Shelf
 Portland Public Library - Adult Department  365.6 CHA    Check Shelf
 South Windsor Public Library - Biographies  B CHARRIERE    Check Shelf
 Southington Library - Adult  B CHARRIERE    Check Shelf
Description xi, 434 pages : map ; 25 cm
Note Original French title: Papillon.
Summary Describes the life of a man sent to prison on a miserable island, Cayena, where escape is impossible. It is a terrible life for him but he finally escapes after much suffering.
"Henri Charrière himself is Papillon. Convicted in Paris in 1931, aged 25, for a murder he had not committed, Charrière was sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana. One thought obsessed him: escape. Forty-two days after his arrival in 1933, he made his first break, traveling on the open sea in a tiny boat, in desperate stages, 1500 miles in all, he reached Colombia. There he was recaptured by the French authorities and sentenced to two years in solitary confinement. Eventually he was sent to Devil's Island. No one had ever escaped from this notorious prison--no one until Papillon flung himself from a giant rock into the foaming sea, to float for days in the shriveling sun--his makeshift raft, two sacks of coconuts. At last, in 1945, he found sanctuary in Venezuela, of which country he is now a citizen. In the course of twelve years, he had undertaken nine daring escapes. Thrilling as the escapes are, life inside the penal settlements is as vividly portrayed: Papillon's fellow prisoners--colorful, ruthless, corrupt, loyal; the horrors of confinement in an open cage; the nightmare of a dungeon where the seawater rose in the cells at high tide, floating with rats and centipedes; the constant threat of suicide or madness--or death at the hands of the guards or of fellow prisoners. It was, of course, the quality of the man himself which enabled him to survive, to escape the horror of the complete annihilation of human values. Not only to escape, but to triumph. As he tells his story straightforwardly, spontaneously, he is revealed as a leader--self-disciplined, modest, humorous, capable of great loyalty--inexhaustibly challenging the injustices of a dehumanized establishment. Papillon has written an adventure story in the deepest sense. Papillon is an odyssey of the human spirit."--Jacket.
Contents The descent into Hell -- En route to the bagne -- The first cavale -- The first cavale (continued) -- Return to civilization -- The Iles du Salut -- The Iles du Salut (continued) -- The return to Royale -- Saint-Joseph -- Diable -- Good-by to the bagne -- Cavale from Georgetown -- Venezuela.
Subject Charrière, Henri, 1906-1973.
Prisoners -- French Guiana -- Biography.
Devil's Island (French Guiana)
Charrière, Henri, 1906-1973.
Charrière, Henri, 1906-1973. (OCoLC)fst00013094
French Guiana -- Devil's Island. (OCoLC)fst01242976
Prisoners. (OCoLC)fst01077103
French Guiana. (OCoLC)fst01206832
Genre/Form Autobiographies. (OCoLC)fst01919894
Biographies. (OCoLC)fst01919896
Autobiographies.
Added Author Castelnau, Jean-Pierre, writer of introduction.
Wilson, June P., 1916-2004, translator.
Michaels, Walter Benn, translator.
Added Title Papillon. English
ISBN 0688022693 (hardcover)
9780688022693 (hardcover)
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