A publishing bidding war began the moment that Amanda Knox walked free. Photogenic, sexually adventurous, naive, wrongfully imprisoned — it’s guaranteed to be a blockbuster to match The Count of Montecristo and The Shawshank Redemption, only its contents will be factual. The book was bought last night by Harper Collins for $4 million.
First-hand accounts of wrongful imprisonment are quite rare, especially when one considers how much coverage miscarriages of justice receive in the press. The most famous book of the genre is Papillon, published by Henri Charrière in 1969. It was recommended by Kwasi Kwarteng MP in our Bookbenchers feature last year, and I chanced upon a copy (translated from the French by Patrick O’Brien of Master and Commander fame) in an airport departure lounge over Christmas.
By no means is it great literature. Charrière’s dialogue is straight out of a bad Errol Flynn film, lots of ‘Stand with me lads’ and ‘Brothers! Don’t submit to the yoke’. But his story is compelling. Wrongfully convicted, he said, of murder in 1932, he was transported to the penal colonies in French Guiana. It is obscene that a modern democracy was still deporting convicts so far into the 20th century. Charrière recounts the inhumanities he and other inmates suffered, and the book caused uproar in France when it was published.
Papillon’s main attraction, though, is Charrière’s indomitable will. He claimed to have escaped 11 times in 10 years. Quite how many of the details actually originated in Charrière’s imagination is debatable — his alleged sexual prowess certainly has the air of embellishment. And there has been some controversy over its accuracy. But that is beside the point, really. Even if he did dream of daring escapes and promiscuous Indians, it kept him sane and determined. What better use is there of fiction?
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