That sounds like my kind of book. They changed the title at some point, for who knows what reason...
Yes, they changed the title in the 1949 paperback edition. There's also two other paperback versions as you can see.
Belbenoit wrote a follow up book called, "Hell On Trial", which I also just read.
No wonder people say Papillon "borrowed" some of Belbenoit's adventures. When you read, "Dry Guillotine" you see many similarities between the two books, such as Belbenoit's 7 months stay with the Indians in Panama, which in, "Papillon", becomes 6 months with the Indians on the border between Columbia and Venezuela.
Also, Belbenoit went to the lepers island to get hold of a canoe for his escape, and who does the exact same thing? Papillon!
And you probably remember Papillon's sidekick, Dega (played by Dustin Hofman in the movie), who was convicted for forging national defence bonds. Well, he's in Belbenoit's, "Hell On Trial", too. Only, his real name is Degras and he did forge national defence bonds. There's other similarities too, so either both men experienced the same kinda things and people or Henri Charriere (Papillon) "borrowed" some of Belbenoit's adventures.
One thing is certain, some of Papillon's experiences are not true. There's been written books about him in France (unfortunately, not translated into English), where they've looked at his prison records. For instance, he did'nt escape from Devil's Island on a bag of coco nuts by throwing himself off a cliff. There's no cliffs on Devil's Island, and no record of anybody ever having escaped from the island, but he did stay on the Island for a few months before he was transferred to the mainland, where he became a nurse in the hospital at the Cascade forest camp, from which he escaped in a boat with a couple of other prisoners.
It's too bad he boosted his adventures because he did really experience a lot. It's true he was locked up in solitary confinement for years on Saint Joseph Island and then spend 5 years at Royale Island. He was transferred to Devil's Island at the end of 1942, and then he was transferred at April, 29, 1943, to the Cascade forest camp on the mainland, from which he escaped the night between March 18-19, 1944. After reaching Venezuela, he was imprisoned, but he finally reached Caracas in 1946 as a free man and became a Venezuelan citizen at July 5, 1956.
If only he had concentrated on his own experiences instead of "boosting" them.
