Pierre Boulle
| Pierre Boulle | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Pierre François Marie Louis Boulle 20 February 1912 Avignon, France |
| Died | 30 January 1994 (aged 81) Paris, France |
| Occupation | Author |
| Nationality | French |
| Period | 1950–1992 |
| Notable works |
The Bridge over the River Kwai Planet of the Apes |
Pierre Boulle (20 February 1912 – 30 January 1994) was a French novelist best known for two works, The Bridge over the River Kwai (1952) and Planet of the Apes (1963), that were both made into award-winning films.
Boulle was an engineer serving as a secret agent with the Free French in Singapore, when he was captured and subjected to two years' forced labour. He used these experiences in The Bridge over the River Kwai, about the notorious Death Railway, which became an international bestseller. The film, named The Bridge on the River Kwai, by David Lean won seven Oscars, and Boulle was credited with writing the screenplay, because its two actual screenwriters had been blacklisted.
His science-fiction novel Planet of the Apes, in which intelligent apes gain mastery over humans, was adapted into a series of eight award-winning films that spawned magazine and TV versions and popular themed toys.
Born Pierre François Marie Louis Boulle in Avignon, France, Boulle was baptised and raised as a Catholic, although later in life he became an agnostic. He studied at the prestigious École supérieure d'électricité (Supélec) where he received an engineer's degree in 1933. From 1936 to 1939, he worked as a technician on British rubber plantations in Malaya. While there he met a Frenchwoman who was separated from her husband. She was to become the love of his life, to whom he would write tender love letters. She later chose to return to her husband, an official in French Indochina. During World War II she and her husband escaped into Malaya, but one of her children died in the process. Boulle would later meet her after the war, and they enjoyed a platonic friendship.
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