Most Popular Books by Pierre Boulle

The original novel that inspired the films! First published more than fifty years ago, Pierre Boulle’s chilling novel launched one of the greatest science fiction sagas in motion picture history. In the not-too-distant future, three astronauts land on what appears to be a planet just like Earth, with lush forests, a temperate climate, and breathable air. But while it appears to be a paradise, nothing is what it seems. They soon discover the terrifying truth: On this world humans are savage beasts, and apes rule as their civilized masters. In an ironic novel of nonstop action and breathless intrigue, one man struggles to unlock the secret of a terrifying civilization, all the while wondering: Will he become the savior of the human race, or the final witness to its damnation? In a shocking climax that rivals that of the original movie, Boulle delivers the answer in a masterpiece of adventure, satire, and suspense.

One of the finest war novels ever written, it tells the story of three POWs who endure the hell of the Japanese camps on the Burma-Siam railway.

Secret moral lapse on the part of a French prosecutor leads ironically to his being hailed as a hero, while he becomes responsible for the death of an innocent man.

1942: Boldly advancing through Asia, the Japanese need a train route from Burma going north. In a prison camp, British POWs are forced into labor. The bridge they build will become a symbol of service and survival to one prisoner, Colonel Nicholson, a proud perfectionist. Pitted against the warden, Colonel Saito, Nicholson will nevertheless, out of a distorted sense of duty, aid his enemy. While on the outside, as the Allies race to destroy the bridge, Nicholson must decide which will be the first casualty: his patriotism or his pride.

The anti-hero is John Butler, back from the war in the Far East branded a coward, a man for whom heroin had become a means of retreat from the horrors of battle. An addict now, he seeks help at a clinic and listens to the oft-repeated exhortation to find a consuming interest into which he can channel all his energies and aspirations. Butler concentrates on the one interest the war has left him - heroin. The combination of his past contacts as a chemistry student at University and his present contact as a drug pusher pave the way to an obsession. Provided with a secret laboratory by the head of the drug organization which employs him, he succeeds in perfecting a technique for producing the purest heroin ever refined. This however, is only the beginning of Butler''s cure.

Like the mythological Icarus, the president of a sometime- in-the-future France falls victim to the lure of the sun, plunging to his death in an airplane he has piloted over the massive solar energy plant that had become his failed dream.

Military operations in the primitive Asian jungle are complicated by the presence of an unknown source privy to every movement.

A very near future science fiction story detailing the possible conclusions of the space race of the 1960s and plans to travel to the Moon and Mars.

With perception and wit, Boulle analyzes public fears and apprehension about the Leviathan, the largest nuclear-powered supertanker ever built, to reveal the ironies and contradictions that plague twentieth-century man.

Story of a French planter in Malaya, his American wife, and a Chinese communist girl, and what happens when their values come into conflict.

"How far will a frustrated photographer go to get an exclusive shot that will make the front page of every paper in the world? Can he take part in a plot to assassinate his country''s president?"--

This is a very strange story. A Chinese executioner in the Middle Ages -- or at least at some far distant time unspecified -- is banned because it is discovered that he murders just before he executes! Good book about a Kafka-like society where you may kill but you may not murder. The motive of the executioner in doing what he does is not explained.

Originally published as Le photographe. Paris, Julliard, 1967.

Ironic story of a French intellectual in the British Intelligence during World War II , who cracks under torture but later tries to pay for his defection with his life.

A group of scientists dissatisfied with world conditions establish a global government that speedily banishes the world''s ills, but other ills take their place.

In this provocative novel, Pierre Boulle probes with a sharp scalpel the psychological anatomy of a spy - a man who sacrifices his country, his honor, and even his own life to an heroic image. In a story of intrigue and adventure as ingenious and gripping as anything in The Bridge Over the River Kwai, Mr. Boulle takes us from the aristocracy of British Intelligence and the German Secret Service to such ungentlemanly pursuits as torture, murder, and long-simmered revenge. The action revolves around Cousin - an intellectual author who prides himself on his own objectivity but who actually sees the world through the dreams of his own imagined superiority. World War II gives Cousin the chance to show that superiority by volunteering for espionage - a job, he feels, that is for gentlemen, and the arduous responsibilities of which only an aristocrat can assume.

Author''s true adventures during World War II, which inspired his novel "The bridge over the River Kwai."

Satirical story of the tense relationships among French employees of a Malayan rubber plantation of the 1930''s.

Science fiction-noveller.

A giant whale becomes the pet and mascot of the British armada and is recommended for a medal of bravery and finally the Victoria Cross.

These stories deal with society''s ineffectual reactions to crime, the instinct for self-preservation, and the perils accompanying the search for perfection.