Robert Merle

Robert Merle (28 August 1908 – 27 March 2004) was a French novelist.

Merle was born in 1908 in Tébessa, French Algeria. His father Félix, who was an interpreter "with a perfect knowledge of literary and spoken Arabic", was killed in 1916 in the Dardanelles. Young Merle and his mother moved to Paris, where he attended three lycées and the Sorbonne.

Merle was professor of English Literature at several universities until the outbreak of the second world war in 1939. During World War II Merle was conscripted in the French army and assigned as an interpreter to the British Expeditionary Force. In 1940 he was in the Dunkirk evacuation on the beach of Zuydcoote — which he called a "blind and abominable lottery" — and was captured by the Germans. Merle was taken prisoner to Stalag VID at Dortmund, and escaped, but was recaptured at Belgian customs. He was repatriated in July 1943, and after the war was awarded the Croix du Combattant.

Merle used his experiences at Dunkirk in his 1949 novel Week-end at Zuydcoote, which became a "sensational success" and won the Prix Goncourt. A 1964 feature film adaptation, Weekend at Dunkirk, was directed by Henri Verneuil and starred Jean-Paul Belmondo. It was a box office hit and made both men famous.

Merle's 1967 novel Un animal doué de raison (lit. A Sentient Animal), a stark Cold War satire inspired by John Lilly's studies of dolphins and the Caribbean Crisis, was translated into English and filmed as The Day of the Dolphin (1973) starring George C. Scott. Merle's post-apocalyptic novel Malevil (1972) was also adapted into a 1981 film. His 1952 novel La mort est mon métier was adapted into a 1977 film, his 1962 novel L'île was filmed as a 1987 miniseries and Le propre de l'homme (1989) was adapted into a 1996 TV movie.