Books like la nuit des temps

The Ice People (French: la Nuit des temps) is a 1968 French science fiction novel by René Barjavel.

When a French expedition in Antarctica reveals the ruins of a 900,000-year-old civilization, scientists from all over the world flock to the site to help explore and understand. The entire planet watches via global satellite television, mesmerized, as the explorers uncover a chamber in which a man and a woman have been in suspended animation since, as the French title suggests, "the night of time". The woman, Éléa, is awakened, and through a translating machine she tells the story of her world, herself and her man Païkan, and how war destroyed her civilization. She also hints at an incredibly advanced knowledge that her still-dormant companion possesses (a scientist, Coban, whom she hates for having separated her from her lover Païkan), knowledge that could give energy and food to all humans at no cost. But the superpowers of the world are not ready to let Éléa's secrets spread, and show that, 900,000 years and an apocalypse later, mankind has not grown up and is ready to make the same mistakes again. Thus, the international team of scientists works under the constant fear of sabotage, a fear that eventually is fulfilled when one of the scientists kills one of his comrades and commits suicide. The scientists then decide to wake up the man, who they still believe to be Coban. He would require a blood transfusion, but Éléa poisons herself to kill the man she hates and then die, unable to live in a world totally different than hers. The novel ends with Dr Simon going back to France, heartbroken, ignoring the cries of war and the world youth's demonstrations.