Above all a novelist and a playwright, Boris Vian is also remembered for his versatility: an engineer, poet, and songwriter, as well as an actor, scriptwriter, and translator, Vian was also a composer, a painter, a member of the Collège de 'Pataphysique, and from 1947 to 1950, a jazz trumpeter at the clubs of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Despite his many interests the fifteen years of Vian's literary career were extremely productive. He left some twenty volumes of published work and pages of notes with ideas for projects never completed owing to his premature death. Vian died suddenly from a heart attack on 23 June 1959 during a private showing of the film version of his controversial novel J'irai cracher sur vos tombes (1946; translated as I Shall Spit on Your Graves, 1948).

"Etre connu, c'est être méconnu" (To be famous is to be misjudged) Vian used to say. Indeed...