Papillon (book)
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Papillon is a memoir by Henri Charrière. It has also been described as an autobiographical novel, or a work of fiction, but the author always maintained that the account was accurate and true. It involves the author's imprisionment subjected to solitary confinement, and at Devil's Island, a French penal colony in French Guiana and his many attempts at escape, of which two were successful. In the first one he managed to escape from prison and ended up living with a tribe in Venezuela, where he impregnated two of the natives, before returning to the colony for revenge, where he would get recaptured. For the second successfull escape attempt, he managed to get off the colony by laying on a hand-made raft and drifting for 2 days to land. The book was adapted into a 1973 movie of the same title staring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.