Devil's Island (Kourou) Devil's Island (Kourou) Devil's Island (French: Île du Diable) is the third-largest island of the Salvation's Islands, an island group in the Atlantic Ocean. It is located approximately 14 km (9 mi) off the coast of French Guiana in South America just north of the town of Kourou. It has an area of 14 ha (34.6 acres). The island was a part of a controversial French penal colony located in French Guiana for 101 years, from 1852 to 1953. Although it was the smallest part of the penal colony, it is notorious for being used for internal exile of French
Penal transportation Timberlake Wertenbaker's play "Our Country's Good", based on Thomas Keneally's novel "The Playmaker", is set in the first Australian penal colony. "My Transportation for Life", Indian freedom fighter Veer Savarkar's memoir of his imprisonment, is set in the British Cellular Jail in the Andaman Islands. The novel "Papillon" tells the story of Henri Charrière, a French criminal convicted on 26 October 1931 as a murderer, and exiled to the French Guinea penal colony on Devil's Island. A film adaptation of the book was made in 1973, starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. Penal transportation, typically to other planets, sometimes appears