Henri Charrière

Henri Charrière (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʁi ʃaʁjɛʁ]; 16 November 1906  – 29 July 1973) was a French writer who was convicted of murder in 1931 by the French courts and pardoned in 1970. He wrote the 1969 novel Papillon, a memoir of his incarceration in and escape from a penal colony in French Guiana. While Charrière claimed that Papillon was largely true, modern researchers believe that much of the book's material came from other inmates, rather than Charrière himself. Charrière denied committing the murder, although he freely admitted to having committed various other petty crimes (notably when he was a procurer) prior to his incarceration.

Biography

Early life

Charrière was born on 16 November 1906 at Saint-Étienne-de-Lugdarès, Ardèche, France. He had two older sisters. His mother died when he was ten. In 1923 at seventeen, he enlisted in the French Navy and served for two years. After that, he became a member of the Paris underworld. He later married and had a daughter.

Imprisonment

According to Papillon

The version of his life presented in his semi-biographical novel, Papillon, claimed that Charrière was convicted on 26 October 1931 of the murder of a pimp named Roland Le Petit, a charge that he strongly denied. He was sentenced to life in prison and ten years of hard labour. He had married Georgette Fourel at the town hall of the 1st arrondissement of Paris, on December 22, 1929. (They divorced on 8 July 1930 by decision of the Paris High Court.) After a brief imprisonment at the transit prison of Beaulieu in Caen, France, he was transported in 1933 to the prison of St-Laurent-du-Maroni on the Maroni River, in the penal settlement of mainland French Guiana.