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Books and films

Many books have been written about the Duvalier era in Haiti, the best known of which is Graham Greene 's novel The Comedians. Duvalier, however, dismissed the piece and referred to its author as "a cretin, a stool pigeon, sadistic, unbalanced, perverted, a perfect ignoramous, lying to his heart's content, the shame of proud and noble England, a spy, a drug addict, and a torturer". The book was later made into a film. Greene himself was declared persona non grata and barred from entering Haiti.

Alan Whicker featured Duvalier in a 1969 episode of Whicker's World, which included an interview with the president. Made by Yorkshire Television, the documentary is deeply revealing of Duvalier's character and of the state of Haiti in 1969.

The first authoritative book on the subject was Papa Doc: Haiti and its Dictator by Al Burt and Bernard Diederich, published in 1969, though several others by Haitian scholars and historians have appeared since Duvalier's death in 1971. One of the most informative, Patrick Lemoine's Fort‑Dimanche: Dungeon of Death, dealt specifically with victims of Fort Dimanche, the prison which Duvalier used for the torture and murder of his political opponents.

In 2007, John Marquis wrote Papa Doc: Portrait of a Haitian Tyrant, which relied in part on records from a 1968 espionage trial in Haiti to detail numerous attempts on Duvalier's life. The trial's defendant, David Knox, was a Bahamian director of information. Knox lost and was sentenced to death, but he was later granted amnesty.