I Spit on Your Graves
Fiction. "In the tradition of Karl May and Franz Kafka, Boris Vian imagines an American even more amazing that the land he has never visited. "I Spit on Your Graves" is the first novel to put the quotation marks around the "hardboiled" thriller -- a vivid and startling performance" (J. Hoberman). The book is Boris Vian's (1920-1959) sex-and-violence-filled homage to American noir. Originally published in France as J'rai Cracher Sur Vos Tombes -- after allegedly being censored in the U.S. and "translated" into French -- the novel was no best seller, establishing Vian as one of the most famous writers of the mid-twentieth century.
The Dead All Have the Same Skin
Vian's second noir novel under the Vernon Sullivan pseudonym is a brutal tale of racism in postwar New York City, as protagonist Daniel Parker is blackmailed by a long lost brother. Also included is the short story "Dogs, Desire and Death," and Vian's account of the controversies surrounding his previous novel I Spit on your Graves.
Unhinged
Once a Wall Street hotshot, Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree chucked it all for a charmingly dilapidated fixer-upper in the tiny town of Eastport, Maine. She was certain she’d left the dangers of city life behind—until she discovered that no place, no matter how idyllic and peaceful it may appear, is safe from murder. It began with the mysterious disappearance of Harriet Hollingsworth—Eastport’s snoopiest resident. Everyone is convinced the old busybody bolted out of town to escape her creditor—everyone except Jake and her best friend Ellie who know Harriet would never leave home without her most prized possession. But before Jake and Ellie can persuade police chief Bob Arnold to open an investigation, they’ll need to come up with proof more sinister than a pair of abandoned binoculars. Just as Jake starts poking around for clues, things suddenly take a troubling turn for the worse. A suspicious accident nearly kills her teenaged son, Sam, and her husband, Wade, just misses getting his head blown off. Jake is prepared to attribute these incidents to a spate of bad luck—until another “accident” leaves a visitor to Eastport unmistakably dead. Most perplexing, all this mayhem coincides with the unexpected arrival of a man from Jake’s past: a former New York City cop. Harry Markle claims he has unintentionally brought an unwelcome guest into Eastport: a crook determined to knock off everyone with ties to Harry. Twenty-four hours ago, Jake’s only worry was fixing her broken-down gutters and downspouts before the big storm swept into town. Now, everything seems to be falling apart all around her. Jake knows from experience that the truth is usually as messy and complicated as do-it-yourself remodeling. As it becomes chillingly clear that appearances in this quaint community are more misleading than ever, she’ll have to find a way to lure a homicidal maniac into the light--before he nails another victim.
I Spit on Your Grave
There is no denying that Meir Zarchi’s I Spit on Your Grave (1978) deserves its title as one of the most controversial films ever made. While many condemn it as misogynistic, others praise it for raising uncomfortable issues about sexual violence. While its reputation as a cult film has undoubtedly been cemented by its unique position in the 1970s/80s exploitation era and the "video nasties" scandal, it has also become mythologized by its own official and unofficial franchises. David Maguire examines why the film still continues to provoke fierce debate forty years on, not only investigating the historical, social, and political landscape into which the film was first released—and condemned—but also examining how it is has inadvertently become ground zero for the rape-revenge genre because of its countless imitators. The book explores how academic study has reevaluated the film’s importance as a cultural statement on gender, the conflicting readings that it throws up, the timeless appeal of its story as examined through folklore and mythology, and its updating to reflect contemporary issues in a post-9/11 world of vengeance and retaliation.
