While in Paris, too poor to afford his own flat, he lived in a hotel until his recently widowed sister, Madeleine Perrusset, allowed him to move into her large apartment. After the war he would keep in touch with his war comrades for the rest of his life.Īfter the war, Boulle returned to work for a while in the rubber industry, but in 1949 he moved back to Paris and began to write. He described his war experiences in the non-fiction My Own River Kwai. He was later made a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur and decorated with the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance. In 1943, he was captured by Vichy France loyalists on the Mekong River and was subjected to severe hardship and forced labour. During the war he was a supporter of Charles de Gaulle.īoulle served as a secret agent under the name Peter John Rule and helped the resistance movement in China, Burma, and French Indochina. After German troops occupied France, he joined the Free French Mission in Singapore. His science-fiction novel Planet of the Apes, in which intelligent apes gain mastery over humans, was adapted into a series of nine award-winning films that spawned magazine and TV versions and popular themed toys.Īt the outbreak of World War II, Boulle enlisted with the French army in Indochina.

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. He used these experiences in The Bridge over the River Kwai, about the notorious Death Railway, which became an international bestseller. He is 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.īoulle 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. Pierre François Marie Louis Boulle (20 February 1912 – 30 January 1994) was a French author.

Pierre boulle novels