This is the story of a man outcast from society, locked away for life. A unique chance to live his life. To journey with him, to feel his emotions, see the world through his eyes. A chance to feel thankful for our lives and to rejoice for the wonders of humanity. Papillon is not just another book, not 'one' of the best books ever written, it is an adventure, a path, maybe, to self-discovery and what I feel, is the best book ever written.
Let me give you a bit of a backstory of the author here. Henry Charriere was an well known figure in the Paris underworld, well respected by his 'colleagues'. His special skills had earned him the name of Papillon, or Butterfly in French. But for all his shady doings, he was convicted in 1931 for the murder of a certain Roland LePetit, a charge he denied for the rest of his life. So at the young age of 25, Papillon was sentenced to a life of hard labor in prison. He was sent to serve his sentence in the penal settlement of French Guiana, which is now an overseas region of France in South America. There were only two things on his mind: escape, and revenge.
The Guiana was known for being impossible to escape from. It consisted of three islands set about 15 miles from the mainland where there were three more huge prisons. Although it was impossible to escape from any of the islands, the île du Diable, or the Devil's island was notoriously dangerous. Landing a boat there was so treacherous that prison officials built a cable car system from the nearby Île Royale. Ironically this was the very island from which Charriere made his final escape!
Right from the moment he stepped foot on the Guiana, he began plotting an escape. He made his first one after just six weeks in the Guiana. He sailed in an open boat for a thousand miles through shark infested waters to Colombia, where diseases like leprosy and malaria were rampant. There, he was taken in by an Indian tribe and lived there for a few months. Captured by the Colombian authorities, he was sent back to Guiana and forced to serve two years in solitary confinement, where the conditions were extremely inhumane. During his next thirteen years in the Guiana, he tried to escape nine times! Every time he tried an escape, the stakes were higher, but he never gave up. The final escape which is so painstakingly described in vivid detail is a tribute to his bottomless endurance and will power.
But his book is not just an account of his life. His book stands as a portal to his era. He tells us about the pearl diving Goajiras from Colombia, the swamps of Cayenne, the all encompassing nature of the people of Venezuela and so much more. It stands as evidence to the great things human beings are capable of. He shares with us the story of how he managed the long years in solitary without going insane. His changing mindsets, his ideas and the amazing people he meets.
He recounts, before setting out to the Guianas, in a solitary prison at the Conciergerie in Paris, a priest met him and prayed with him. When he told the priest that his thirst for revenge could never be quenched, the priest told him that when he was older, he would give up the idea of punishment and revenge. 35 years later, as he writes, he wholeheartedly agrees with the priest. Another event that he writes about is an encounter with lepers. As he makes his first escape from the Guiana with a small group, he gets cheated on the sale of a boat for their escape. Another escaped convict living in the bush, called the masked Breton, instructs him to get a sturdy boat from the lepers of Ile Aux Pigeons or the pigeons island. When he gets to the island, the kindness of the lepers, the care they give his group, the precautions they take so as to not infect any of them overwhelms Papi. Spurned by society, disavowed by god himself, with nothing to gain or lose, these people understand the convicts' predicament and each leper on the island tries to help them succeed in their cavale. If this is not the height of humanity, these poor people falling to pieces, but with hearts far far bigger, then what is?
His natural instinct for survivalism is another thing that stuns us. He casually recollects the horrifying time he spent in the black holes of the Santa Marta prison in Colombia. The tide would come in every 11 hours and half his cell would be flooded, bringing with it sewer rats the size of cats, biting crabs and giant centipedes. When the tide ebbed, it would leave behind half an inch of filth and he would then have to clean his cell with a long piece of wood. Over the entire duration of his imprisonment, he values his health and mind the most, maintaining the former as far as he can on prison rations and the latter by reassuring himself of his imminent escape and by constantly plotting one.
A born story teller, Charriere narrates the story the way he would tell one. This makes the book all the more exciting, a breath of fresh air as opposed to the usual established ways of writing we are used to now. There is some controversy surrounding the facts presented in the book. Some allege that the events in the book are not true. But with such an amazing piece of literature as the end result, nobody really cares.
The least this book can do is to change your outlook of the world we live in. It is nothing short of revolutionary and I would recommend that you put this book on top of your to read list.
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