Undoubtedly, this book would never have appeared if, in July 1967, a man in his sixties hadn't heard people talking about Albertine Sarrazin in the Caracas newspapers, a year after the earthquake that had devastated the city. This black jewel, vibrant with radiance, joy, and courage, had recently died. She had become world-famous for publishing, in little more than a year, three books, two of which told the story of her escape from prison and her return to it. This man's name was Henri Charrière, and he was returning from afar. He was returning specifically from the Cayenne hard labor prison, where he had "ascended" in 1933, an outlaw, yes, convicted, but for a murder he didn't commit, and sentenced to life imprisonment—that is, until the moment of his death. Henri Charrière, formerly known as Papillon in criminal circles, was born French into a family of teachers in the Ardèche, but later became Venezuelan because the Venezuelan people preferred his love of life to his criminal record, and because thirteen years of flight and struggle to survive the hell of a hard-labor prison were enough to shape a future, not a past. So, in July 1967, Charrière went to the French bookstore in Caracas and bought the novel *The Ankle*. The number on the book cassette was 123,000. He read the number and said to himself, quite simply: “That’s nice, but if the girl, with her broken bones, moving from one hiding place to another, sold 123,000 books, then I, with my thirty years of adventures, will sell three times that.” It's a logical conclusion, but it's no longer dangerous since Albertine's success, among others, fills publishers' desks with dozens of manuscripts, without hope. Adventure, misery, and injustice, however intense, don't necessarily make a book. One must be able to write them well, that is, possess the talent that makes the reader see, feel, and experience, within themselves, everything that the author saw, felt, and experienced. And here, Charrière was very lucky. He never once thought of writing a single line about his adventures: he is a man of action, life, and warmth, with a raging storm in his cunning eye, and a warm, slightly rough southern voice that we can listen to for hours because he narrates like anyone, that is, like all great narrators.