La planète des singes

Imagine astronauts flying super fast to a faraway planet where smart monkeys wear suits, build cities, and act like bosses, while people run around naked like wild animals who can't talk! Brave Ulysse shows the monkey scientists he's smart and human, makes a monkey friend named Zira, loves a quiet girl named Nova, and fights mean ape leaders to escape. But whoa—the big surprise ending flips everything, making you wonder if people could ever become the animals! It's a fun, scary story about who's really in charge and why we shouldn't mess up our world. (512 characters)

In Pierre Boulle's 'La Planète des Singes,' two ape journalists, Jinn and Phyllis, intercept a metallic cylinder drifting through space near Betelgeuse, containing a manuscript penned by human astronaut Ulysse Mérou. Mérou details his 2476 AD expedition aboard the relativistic spacecraft Hammurabi with Professor Antelle and photographer Arthur Levain to the tenth planet of Betelgeuse, dubbed Soror. Landing amid a lush paradise, they encounter mute, primitive humans treated as beasts by a civilized society of apes—chimpanzees as scientists and artists, gorillas as soldiers, orangutans as administrators—who have developed language, cities, and rigid hierarchies mirroring flawed human institutions. Captured after shocking the apes by demonstrating human speech, Mérou endures dehumanizing experiments, ignites controversy over human intelligence, and uncovers buried truths about Soror's history. Navigating prejudice and dogma, Mérou allies with reformist chimpanzees Zira and Cornelius, consummates a taboo romance with feral human Nova, and faces trial before orangutan leader Dr. Zaius, who guards sacred scrolls concealing humanity's forgotten dominance and self-destruction via nuclear war. A daring escape and orbital revelation propel Mérou back toward Earth, only for the manuscript's frame narrative to deliver Boulle's masterful twist: the journalists are apes, implying Earth's parallel downfall after 700 years of relativistic time dilation. This satirical masterpiece probes evolution's reversibility, civilization's fragility, and humanity's hubris with philosophical depth and ironic precision. (748 characters)