Pierre Boulle is a French author most famous for writing The Bridge On The River Kwai (Le Pont de la rivière Kwai) and Monkey Planet (La Planète des singes, which was adapted into the movie Planet Of The Apes).
Although an electrical
engineer by trade, Boulle moved to
Malay in 1938 and became an overseer at a rubber plantation. During
World War II, he signed on as a
soldier, and then moved on to work as
secret agent and member of the
resistance in the
Pacific Theater.
He spent about a year in a Japanese
POW camp, and his experiences there are echoed in the aforementioned books.