Boris Vian, born March 10, 1920 in Ville-d'Avray (Hauts-de-Seine) and died June 23, 1959 in Paris (7th arrondissement)[1], is a writer, poet, lyricist, singer, music critic, French jazz musician (trumpeter) and artistic director.
An engineer trained at the École centrale, he also devoted himself to the activities of screenwriter, translator (American English), lecturer, actor and painter.
Trained as an engineer, Boris Vian began his artistic career as a trumpeter in the jazz clubs of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
Despite the success and the scandal caused by the pastiches of American black novels that he wrote under the pseudonym of Vernon Sullivan, among which 'I will go to spit on your graves', one of the bestsellers of the year 1947, 'And we will kill all the hideous' and 'The Dead have all the same skin', the novels he published under his real name in the post-war years, 'Vercoquin et le plancton', 'L'Ecume des days' or even 'L'Arrache-coeur', did not bring him the expected notoriety.
Also author of plays, songs and poems, musical reviews, Vian mixes in his novels humor and melancholy with a poetic writing which highlights his overflowing imagination.
Heart disease since adolescence, he succumbed at the age of 39, leaving behind him a rich and varied work that remains inimitable to this day...