The Bridge on The River Kwai - Pierre Boule

This is the famous novel about the prisoners of war in Burma during World War II, which served as the inspiration for the classic film.

The Bridge on the River Kwai tells the story of British P.O.W's placed in Burma under the control of the Japanese during the Second World War. The prisoners are tasked with building a bridge, with the bridge and the schedule of work all been designed and thought out by the Japanese. The English prisoner, Colonel Nicholson, disapproved of how the work was managed, thinking the construction work would be far more efficient and the result far more solid and aesthetically pleasing if the design and management had a few tweaks. Nicholson protested the Japanese commander's rulings until the Japanese allowed a few changes to how things were run in the camp, and eventually Nicholson found himself managing the whole job of building the bridge, even redesigning the whole thing. Called a tribute to British eccentricity, this turned out to be a light hearted plot, which is at odds with the subject matter and setting.

So I knew very little about this book going in. I haven't seen the film and I had only a loose grasp of the plot - I knew about the notorious bridge, and I knew about the conditions the prisoners lived in. I expected this book to be about  the prisoners - the  back breaking labour they carried out, and the deaths within the camps. This book quickly touches on these subjects, but only devotes a paragraph or two to the hardship of the prisoners - I'm not sure it even mentions deaths. It's quickly brushed off and seems to belittle what they went through - as if the prisoners would go home and get over it. We all know that wasn't the case - over 12,000 allied prisoners died during the construction of the railway that this bridge is a part of, and the ones who survived carried the experience with them for the rest of their lives. This is an issue which is close to me - an older relative was a prisoner in Burma and worked on the railway, and by all accounts was never the same afterwards. Apparently this is quite a popular criticism of the book. Maybe it's nature of the subject matter inevitably bringing up criticism that it wasn't handled appropriately. Maybe if Boulle hadn't used a real bridge where real people died he would have saved himself this criticism - if he had used a fictional bridge it would have avoided this issue.

Anyway, back to the book. So it wasn't a harsh look on the lives of the prisoners. It was more a look on the absurdities of war - very similar to Catch 22, but not done as well as Heller's masterpiece. A number of absurd and comedic situations rise up, such as when a soldier will need to do his first parachute jump in an upcoming mission, and enquires about doing some practice jumps. He's told that the law of averages means that the more jumps he does the more likely he is to die, so better just do the one and hope it goes ok. Maybe its funnier in the book.

This is the second book I've read by Boulle, the other being Planet of the Apes, and it is (in my opinion) the stronger of the two. This reads like a classic book, written by a master of his craft, whereas Apes is a bit more of an amateurish affair. Maybe it's the translation - both books were originally in French - and we know great writing can lose a lot when shifted into another language. Happily, this isn't the case here. Kwai stays sharp, and is still great even after being moved away from its mother tongue. Boulle's description of Nicholson proudly walking on the finished bridge is absolutely magnificent, and shows what a capable writer he was.

I really enjoyed Kwai. It's a great book. It's got a good plot and it's written well, and there's a message in there too. It's a shame it deals with the plight of the prisoners so flippantly - this has caused what should have been thought of as an excellent book to be just a very good one.