I Spit On Your Graves

'Translated' into French, J'irai cracher sur vos tombes - I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVES - was a pure mystification, but also a direct homage to American literature and movies, by a young author, Boris Vian (1920 - 1959).

More deeply, it was also a violent attack on racism by a jazz fan who had already befriended many black musicians and was to become the closest French friend of Ellington, Davis, and Parker.

The novel became a bestseller in France and established a scandalous reputation for Vian. But for the past 40 years, Vian has become one of the most famous writers of the mid 20th Century, and his hoax of 1946 is only one example - provocative and outrageous, though powerful and meaningful - of his prolific production: novels and short stories, plays, and scenarios, chronicles, poems and songs.

'To Americans Boris Vian has long been one fo the hidden glories of French literature. In I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVES, he wrote an utterly untypical work, a blast from his Id that may well have killed him. Even now, with misogyny disguised as racial justice, its venom remains potent and disturbing, in equal parts appalling and riveting. It is a singular book, not for the squeamish, and not to be passed by.' -Jim Krusoe