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Cover of The bridge on the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle

The bridge on the River Kwai

Pierre Boulle

  • 221 pages · about 4 hours
  • First published 1952
  • 95 editions
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1 About this book

The Bridge over the River Kwai (French: Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï) is a novel by the French novelist Pierre Boulle, published in French in 1952 and English translation by Xan Fielding in 1954.

The story is historical fiction, with the construction of the Burma Railway in 1942–1943 as its setting; it is partly based on Pierre Boulle's own life experience working in rubber plantations in Malaya and later working for allied forces in Singapore and French Indochina during the Second World War.

The novel deals with the plight of World War II British prisoners of war forced by the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) to build a bridge for the "Death Railway", so named because of the large number of prisoners and conscripts who died during its construction. The novel won France's Prix Sainte-Beuve in 1952.

Summary adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

  • Japanese Prisoners and prisons
  • Japan
  • World War II
  • Motion picture plays
  • War & military

2 About Pierre Boulle

1912–1994

Pierre François Marie Louis Boulle (20 February 1912 – 30 January 1994) was a French author. 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. Boulle was an engineer serving as a secret agent with the Free French in Southeast Asia, when he was captured and imprisoned for two years.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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