Henri Charrière     1969     576p     5 x 8

“We have too much technological progress, life is too hectic, and our society has only one goal: to invent still more technological marvels to make life even easier and better. The craving for every new scientific discovery breeds a hunger for greater comfort and the constant struggle to achieve it. All that kills the soul, kills compassion, understanding, nobility.”

For decades Charrière tried to escape from the french penal colony he’d been sentenced to for murder by going on one cavale after another. An amazing fucking book. Some say Charrière tells cavales that weren’t his own as though they were, which would make Papillion a collective history of excarceration.

$5-10

Other works involving prison, excarceration, prisoners, escape, prisoner writings, france, pleasure, revenge, crime, the ocean, south america, memoir, sailing, 1930s, 1940s