Robert Merle, 95; Author’s Book Inspired ‘Day of the Dolphin’

Robert Merle, 95, the award-winning French author of the novel that inspired Mike Nichols’ motion picture “The Day of the Dolphin,” died Saturday of natural causes at his home in the Yvelines region outside of Paris.

The 1973 American film, starring George C. Scott as a scientist who trains talking dolphins, was inspired by Merle’s 1967 novel “Un Animal doue de raison,” which was published in the U.S. in 1969 under the same title as the film.

Merle, a prisoner of war during World War II, set his first novel, “Weekend in Zuydcoote,” in the Allied forces’ evacuation from Dunkirk. The book won the 1949 Goncourt Prize, France’s most prestigious literary award, and was made into a movie starring Jean-Paul Belmondo.

A native of Tebessa, Algeria, who was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris, Merle taught English and American literature at several French universities as he wrote novels and essays and worked as a translator. Among his other novels was “Behind the Glass” and the science fiction work “The Virility Factor.”