Papillon

The international bestseller of Henri Charrière’s account of his cycle of imprisonment over the span of a decade and his remarkable escape from the notorious prison, Devil’s Island—now a major motion picture starring Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek (Mr. Robot)

“A modern classic of courage and excitement.”—New Yorker

Henri Charrière, known as “Papillon,” for the butterfly tattoo on his chest, was convicted in Paris in 1931 of a murder he did not commit. Sentenced to life imprisonment in the penal colony of French Guiana, he became obsessed with one goal: escape. After planning and executing a series of treacherous yet failed attempts over many years, he was eventually sent to the notorious prison, Devil’s Island, a place from which no one had ever escaped . . . until Papillon. His flight to freedom remains one of the most incredible feats of human cunning, will, and endurance ever undertaken.

Charrière’s astonishing autobiography, Papillon, was published in France to instant acclaim in 1968, more than twenty years after his final escape. Since then, it has become a treasured classic—the gripping, shocking, ultimately uplifting odyssey of an innocent man who would not be defeated.