The Bridge Over the River Kwai: A Novel

Front Cover
Random House Publishing Group, Aug 28, 2007 - Fiction - 224 pages
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.
 

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Contents

Section 1
3
Section 2
11
Section 3
15
Section 4
23
Section 5
29
Section 6
36
Section 7
42
Section 8
51
Section 15
108
Section 16
119
Section 17
126
Section 18
137
Section 19
148
Section 20
157
Section 21
167
Section 22
172

Section 9
58
Section 10
65
Section 11
75
Section 12
84
Section 13
92
Section 14
101
Section 23
185
Section 24
194
Section 25
199
Section 26
209
Section 27
211
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

Pierre Boulle was born in Avignon, France, in 1912. He originally trained as an engineer, but in 1936 he went to Malaysia and worked as a rubber planter. In 1939 he was called up in the French forces in Indochina, and when France fell during World War II, he fled to Singapore, where he joined the Free French Mission. After the Japanese invasion, he was sent via Rangoon and the Burma Road to Yunnan to establish contact with Kuomintang forces. He infiltrated Indochina as a guerilla where he was captured in 1943. He escaped in 1944, was picked up by a British plane, and served in the Special Forces in Calcutta for the rest of the war.His first novel to be published in the United States was The Bridge on the River Kwai. The book was awarded the Prix Sainte-Beuve prize in France, which led to the film version that received an amazing seven Academy Awards. He considered his subsequent books, of which Planet of the Apes is the most well known, to be social fantasies.

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