21 June 1969: The Parisian literary scene has a new idol in the form of an ex-convict who has written about his escape from infamous French penal colony, Devil’s Island
The Parisian literary scene has a new idol called, appropriately enough, Papillon –butterfly. Since his memoirs were published on 19 May the weeklies and dailies have been devoting extravagant space, from full-page book reviews to five-page interviews of gasping admiration, to the exploits of this 61-year-old ex-convict, Henri “Papillon” Charriere, late of Pigalle and now resident in Venezuela.
Condemned, wrongfully he claims, to life imprisonment for the murder of a pimp in Paris in 1931, Papillon, a confessed safe-breaker, filled 13 copy books with the story of 13 years dominated by two obsessions: escape and revenge. He escaped, or tried to, nine times: he forded rivers; hacked his way through jungles; with two companions crossed more than a thousand miles of the Caribbean in an open boat; and made his final escape floating on a sack of coconuts. Just the kind of thing to appeal to cosmopolitans with a soft centre of romanticism and a need of fresh air and exercise.
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Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/article/2024/jun/19/henri-charriere-papillon-de-pigalle-1969
Author : Peter Lennon
Publish date : 2024-06-19 13:20:29
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