Papillon eBook

Henri Charrière was born in 1906 in France. After a brief stint in his country's Navy, he entered the Parisian criminal underworld, which nicknamed him Papillon. At the age of 25, he was accused of murder and sentenced to hard labor and life imprisonment in the penal colony of Saint-Lorenzo de Maroni, in French Guiana. While in prison, Charrière staged several escape attempts and, eleven years later, managed to escape from the Devil's Island prison, where he had been transferred. After spending a year in a Venezuelan prison, he obtained his freedom and settled in Caracas. In 1969, he published his memoirs recounting his time in prison. The book quickly became a worldwide bestseller and was adapted into the celebrated film starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. Henri Charrière died in 1973 in Madrid from cancer.