Vercoquin and the Plankton

Translated, with an introduction, by Terry Bradford / October 2022 / 5.375 x 8, 208 pp. / 978-1-939663-82-5 Written for his friends in the winter of 1943–1944 when he was only 23, Vercoquin and the Plankton was the first of Boris Vian’s novels to be published under his own name. Published in 1947, the book came out two months after his succès de scandale under the nom de plume of the fictitious American author Vernon Sullivan, I Will Spit on Your Graves (a novel banned in France from 1953 to 1973 and for which Vian narrowly escaped a prison sentence), and two months before the publication of his beloved classic The Foam of the Days. At once social documentary, scathing satire, and jazz manifesto, Vercoquin and the Plankton describes the collision of two worlds under the Vichy regime: that of the youthful dandyism of the ever-partying Zazous, and the murderously maniacal bureaucracy of a governmental office for standardization. In this roman à clef drawn from Vian’s own contradictory li