Finding his wings (Papillon - Henri Charriere)

Member Name: chrisandmark

Product:	Papillon - Henri Charriere
Date:	19/08/03 (1470 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A gripping read

Disadvantages: None at all

This paperback book was originally published in 1969 and 34 years later it's a stunning read. I found it when we moved house last year, in the loft there was a bag of books which Mark brought down for me to sort through. I hadn't got a book on the go (due to a library fine which I keep forgetting to pay I can't get a book out at the moment! lol) so thought I'd give it a whirl. Can I just add that Papillon was later made into an epic film starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman but as I've never seen the film, I can't comment on whether it was a sucessful book to film adaption.

The central character in the book is Papillon, which is French for butterfly, who was convicted of manslaughter in 1931 and sentenced to life in the French penal colony. Two things are worth mentioning here, the first being that all the way through the book Papillon protests his innocence and the second is that life in those days meant you were where they put you until the day you died. This is a horrible thought as it says early on in the book that Papillon was only 25 when he was conviced for the manslaughter, so a young man was effectively 'written off' very early in his life. Papillon is actually a man called Henri Charriere, a frenchman born in 1906, and it is Mr Charriere who wrote the original transcript from which the translator came up with this book.

In a nutshell, this book is a tale of Papillons many escape attempts to get away from the penal settlements in French Guiana (many of which were sucessful in the short term) and the amazing lengths he went to to avoid spending the rest of his life repenting a crime he was innocent of. In the end he only served 13 years of his sentence, but to survive 13 years in the environment he found himself in was an accomplishment it itself. He continually escaped, was re-captured, escaped again, was re-captured again and it goes on and on. His escape attempts were daring as he said he'd rather

die trying to be a free man than carry on living in the living hell he was in. His final escape was made from Devil's Island, riding the biggest wave that hit the island chained to a sack full of cocnut shells - this escape attempt was made with a friend of his who also managed to get to dry land but was killed at the last minute when exhaustion caused him to lose concentration and he walked onto quick sand.

Although the main reason you'd want to read this book is to read about Papillons escape attempts, a lot of the book is devoted to what his life was like AFTER the attempts when he was living as a free man for however long it took for him to be re-captured. An excellent part of the book is when he tells a tale of how he came upon a group of Goajira Indians in Venezuela and then went on to spend a year living with them. He fell in love with an Indian girl and then later fell in love with her younger sister and they spent a happy year living together in a mud hut (all 3 of them!) until after learning they were both pregnant, Papillon's butterfly instinct kicked in and he left his 'tribe' and was soon re-captured. This part of the story is a fantastic insight into the lives of these Indians who would dive for oysters and the pearls that were found would be handed to the men, even though it was the women that spent hours in the sea diving.

Papillon also spent time with the Lepers on another part of the Penal Colony and spent time in various jails around the world when he had been re-captured. He was always searching for different ways to escape and quite often he'd take friends with him, although his friends had a nasty habit of dying in the escape attempts! Due to his escape attempts he was labelled as 'Very Dangerous' and this turned out to be true when an attempt he had spent ages perfecting was foiled by an informer. He lured the other convict to a tribunal and killed him in front of the warders. For this he
was
sentenced to 8 years in solitary confinement (narrowly escaping the death penalty as the other man had cut Papillon first, and Papillon cried self defence). On the penal colonies, solitary meant just that - the condemned man was put into a tiny cell and left alone to serve his sentence. His small meals were pushed through a hatch and the prisoner had no human contact at all, if he needed to see a doctor he was made to stand in silence at the back of his cell while the doctor looked at him through a small hatch in the door. Most of the men who served longer than 2 years in this solitary either went mad or died from malnutrition or of the many diseases that were flying around. Due to Papillons strength of character, he was able to make the governor see that this was inhumane treatment and thanks to him the men in solitary were able to take small amounts of exercise and see the doctor on a regular basis.

I can't tell you any more about this book as I don't want to spoil it for those of you who want to read it, but I thoroughly recommend it as it's a realistic tale of Papillons struggle to get his life back. The book has adventure, action, a bit of romance and a huge dose of gritty realism - it takes some reading, but every page of the 560 page book has you on the edge of your seat in a way that modern books don't seem to touch you. The book I read has the price of £1.50 on the back cover, although you'll pay a lot more than that now (if you can still get the book) so it would be a better idea to get the book out of the library.

Is he free in the end? Well, you'll just have to get the book and find out! :o)

Thanks for reading. :o)

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