Biographies: Pierre Boulle - Writer

Biographies

 [1 Content]

---

Pierre Boulle was a French novelist. He was born in 1912 in Avignon. He was baptised and raised as a catholic, although later in his life he was an agnostic. He studied at the prestigious École supérieure d'électricité (Supélec) where he received an engineer's degree in 1933. During the second World War, Boulle was an engineer serving as a secret agent with the Free French in Singapore, where he was captured and subjected to two years of forced labour. His experience during the war led him to write the international best seller “The Bridge on the River Kwai”, which was later turned into a multi-Academy Award winner film with the same name by David Lean. He also wrote the science-fiction novel “Planet of the Apes”, which was turned into a series of eight award-winning films, that in turn inspired a franchise of comics, toys and games. Pierre Boulle died in Paris, France on 30 January 1994, at age 81.

• 11 August 2014
• Tarek Sharkawy