I Spit on Your Graves

I Spit on Your Graves (in French, J'irai cracher sur vos tombes) is a 1946 novel by the French writer Boris Vian. It was published under the pseudonym "Vernon Sullivan" and illustrated by Jean Boullet in 1947. Its subject is racism against Black men, tolerated and even sanctioned by the justice system. The protagonist, Lee Anderson, is a light-skinned African American who arrives in a small town in the American South and passes as white. He works as a bookshop clerk and hides the real reason for his presence: avenging his brother, who was lynched and hanged for having a relationship with a white woman. To do so, he gains the trust of the town's young people while plotting to seduce and abduct the heiresses of the wealthiest family in the area.

Vian had never set foot in the United States, but he admired its popular culture and its jazz. Drawing on the American hardboiled fiction of writers such as Nelson Algren, Richard Wright and Raymond Chandler, he built a fictional setting and presented the book as the translation of a work by a supposed African American author. The hoax went undiscovered until long after the novel had gained notoriety and commercial success.

The book caused scandal because of its violence and explicit scenes. In France, censors turned it into one of the most controversial titles of its time. Its notoriety reached an extreme when a real murderer used it as a guide: a copy was found beside the body of a prostitute, with a passage underlined. Vian was prosecuted for translating material deemed objectionable, paid a fine, and the work was banned in France in 1950. The popularity damaged his reputation, and his books did not return to print in earnest until after his death. He died of a heart attack in 1959 while attending the premiere of a film adaptation.