''I Spit on Your Graves'' (french: J'irai cracher sur vos tombes) is a 1946 crime novel by the French writer
Boris Vian
Boris Vian (; 10 March 1920 – 23 June 1959) was a French polymath: writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer who is primarily remembered for his novels. Those published under the pseudonym Vernon Sulliva ...
, published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan. The story is set in the United States and revolves around a sexual and racial conflict.
Reception
Chris Petit
Chris Petit (born 17 June 1949) is an English novelist and filmmaker. During the 1970s he was Film Editor for '' Time Out'' and wrote in ''Melody Maker''. His first film was the cult British road movie ''Radio On'', while his 1982 film ''An Unsu ...
of ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' reviewed the book in 2001, and called it "dreamily convincing", elaborating: "A main inspiration would have been the slew of Hollywood movies that opened in Paris after
the liberation, identified by the French as
films noirs. ''I Spit''... is straight noir, but also a work of liberated imagination after four years of
Nazi occupation
German-occupied Europe refers to the sovereign countries of Europe which were wholly or partly occupied and civil-occupied (including puppet governments) by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany at various times between 1939 ...
: heady, abandoned, fevered and lubricious. A fusion of prime US pulp and French sado-eroticism
Adaptation
The book was adapted into a film with the same title directed by Michel Gast. Vian had already publicly denounced the adaptation while it was in production, but attended the premiere on 23 June 1959. A few minutes into the screening, he stood up and began to shout out his dissatisfaction with the film, and while doing so, he collapsed and died from
sudden cardiac death
Cardiac arrest is when the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops beating. It is a medical emergency that, without immediate medical intervention, will result in sudden cardiac death within minutes. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and possib ...
on the way to the hospital.
See also
*
1946 in literature
Events January
* January 6 - The 1946 North Vietnamese parliamentary election, first general election ever in Vietnam is held.
* January 7 – The Allies recognize the Austrian republic with its 1937 borders, and divide the country into f ...
*
20th-century French literature
20th-century French literature is literature written in French from 1900 to 1999. For literature made after 1999, see the article Contemporary French literature. Many of the developments in French literature in this period parallel changes in ...
*
Hardboiled
Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence o ...
References
External links
*
J’irai cracher sur vos tombes, complete text in HTML, public domain in Canada
J'irai cracher sur vos tombes complete text in PDF, public domain in Canada
1946 French novels
Novels by Boris Vian
French crime novels
Novels set in the United States
Works published under a pseudonym
French novels adapted into films
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