WAutumn in Peking is a 1947 novel by the French writer Boris Vian. It was published by Jean d’Halluin's Éditions du Scorpion in 1947 with a second edition at Éditions de Minuit in 1956 which had a drawing by Mose on the cover. It was reissued in 1963 and reprinted a number of times. The French critic Bruno Maillé has described it as a surrealist novel, something the surrealists themselves refuted, however Alistair Rolls in his study of intertextuality in four novels of Boris Vian argues the novel contains many surrealist elements and techniques. The Peking of the title is not literal; if anywhere the location of the novel's main action is a “dream-desert” allowing Vian to play with visual extremes of searing light and heat as well as intense blackness and night. It takes place in an imaginary desert called Exopotamie where a train station and a railway line are under construction. Pestereaux argued that Peking was simply slang for Paris; an allegory of Paris post WW2 reconstruction and the insanity of its bureaucracy.
WThe Dead All Have the Same Skin is a 1947 crime novel by the French writer Boris Vian. It tells the story of a mixed Black-White American, who manages to have a career in "white society" without anyone knowing of his origin; when his black half-brother turns up and tries to blackmail him by threatening to reveal his origin, his life turns into a downward spiral of violence. It was the second book published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan, after I Spit on Your Graves from 1946.
WFroth on the Daydream is a 1947 novel by French author Boris Vian. Though told as a linear narrative, the novel employs surrealism and contains multiple plot lines, including the love stories of two couples, talking mice, and a man who ages years in a week. One of the main plot lines concerns a newlywed man whose wife develops a rare and bizarre illness that can only be treated by surrounding her with flowers.
WHeartsnatcher is a 1953 novel by the French writer Boris Vian. It tells the story of a psychoanalyst who is newly arrived in a very superstitious village where absurd events occur. The heartsnatcher of the title of this book was first seen in an earlier Vian novel Froth on the daydream. It is a macabre invention, an implement with which that traditional seat of our emotions can be gorily extracted. One victim of it is a philosopher named Jean-Sol Partre.
WI Spit on Your Graves is a 1946 crime novel by the French writer Boris Vian, published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan. The story is set in the United States and revolves around a sexual and racial conflict.
WThe Red Grass is a 1950 novel by the French writer Boris Vian, published by Éditions Toutain.
WTurmoil in the Swaths is a novel by the French writer Boris Vian. It was published posthumously by La Jeune Parque in 1966.
WVercoquin and the Plankton is a 1946 novel by the French writer Boris Vian, published by Éditions Gallimard.