Boris Vian was a novelist, poet, jazz trumpeter, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor, and engineer. He was the emblematic figure of the postwar Paris cultural milieu: friend to Camus, de Beauvoir, and Sartre (until Sartre seduced his wife); the Parisian champion of Duke Ellington and Miles Davis; the inspiration for and mentor to Serge Gainsbourg; the French translator of Raymond Chandler. Vian, who had suffered a pulmonary edema in 1956, died of cardiac arrest in 1959, at age thirty-nine, during a screening of a Hollywood adaptation of one of his novels, outraged at the American interpretation of his novel, set in America, where he had never been. His last words were reportedly: “These guys are supposed to be American? My ass!” Stanley Chapman was a British architect, designer, writer, and translator, most notably of Vian and Raymond Queneau. He was the founder of Outrapo and a member of Oulipo, the Collège de ’Pataphysique (of which Vian was also a member), and the Lewis Carroll Society. He died in 2009.

Books by Boris Vian

Mood Indigo: A Novel

by Boris Vian - Fiction, Romance

The story is simple: Boy meets girl; boy marries girl; girl falls ill on their honeymoon with a water lily on the lung, which can only be treated by being surrounded by flowers; boy goes broke desperately trying to keep his true love alive.