Louis Dega (sometimes written Louis Delga) is the name of a character in
Henri Charrière's novel ''
Papillon''. In the
1973 film
Events January
* January 1 - The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark 1973 enlargement of the European Communities, enter the European Economic Community, which later becomes the European Union.
* January 15 – Vietnam War: ...
this character was played by
Dustin Hoffman and in the
2017 film the role was played by
Rami Malek
Rami Said Malek (; , ; born May 12, 1981) is an American actor. He is known for portraying computer hacker Elliot Alderson in the USA Network television series ''Mr. Robot'' (2015–2019), for which he received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outs ...
. Purportedly an autobiography, few of the characters and events in ''Papillon''
could be corroborated and it is perhaps best regarded as a narrative novel, combining and embellishing the adventures of Charrière and several fellow inmates, in particular of
René Belbenoît and
Charles Brunier.
In the book, Dega is introduced as one who "had been caught up in the scandal of the counterfeit National Defense bonds", had become rich and "one of the biggest crooks" in the
Marseille underworld, but was exposed as the lead forger in 1929 by one "Brioulet", an arrested partner in this crime, when Dega had refused to help him to pay for a lawyer. He was sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment on
Devil's Island
The penal colony of Cayenne ( French: ''Bagne de Cayenne''), commonly known as Devil's Island (''Île du Diable''), was a French penal colony that operated for 100 years, from 1852 to 1952, and officially closed in 1953 in the Salvation Islands ...
, where he became a companion of Charrière for 13 years. The two were first sent to a prison in
Caen
Caen (, ; nrf, Kaem) is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the department of Calvados. The city proper has 105,512 inhabitants (), while its functional urban area has 470,000,[Barranquilla
Barranquilla () is the capital district of Atlántico Department in Colombia. It is located near the Caribbean Sea and is the largest city and third port in the Caribbean Coast region; as of 2018 it had a population of 1,206,319, making it Col ...]
prison in
Colombia
Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...
. The two became best friends during their sentence.
There was a real bonds counterfeit scandal, for which multiple people were arrested in
Metz in 1925, the main forger among them one Fernand Royer born in Paris in 1881, but the names Dega or Brioulet were not associated with it. Dega likely is a fusion of two or more people Charrière had met or read about.
[ Gérard de Villiers, ''Papillon épinglé – La vérité sur le bagne et sur le Venezuela'', Presses de la cité, 1970, ]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dega, Louis
Literary characters introduced in 1969
Fictional French people
Fictional prisoners and detainees