I Spit on Your Graves (French: J'irai cracher sur vos tombes) 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.
Chris Petit of The Guardian reviewed the book in 2001, and called it "dreamily convincing", elaborating: "A main inspiration would have been the slew of Hollywood movies that opened in Paris after the liberation, identified by the French as films noirs. I Spit... is straight noir, but also a work of liberated imagination after four years of Nazi occupation: heady, abandoned, fevered and lubricious. A fusion of prime US pulp and French sado-eroticism[.]"[1]
The book was adapted into a film with the same title directed by Michel Gast. Vian had already publicly denounced the adaptation while it was in production, but attended the premiere on 23 June 1959. A few minutes into the screening, he stood up and began to shout out his dissatisfaction with the film, and while doing so he collapsed and died of a sudden cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital.[2]