Mood Indigo - Boris Vian, translated by John Sturrock (Grove Press, First English Edition, 1968)
Mood Indigo - Boris Vian, translated by John Sturrock (Grove Press, First English Edition, 1968)
This Grove Press first English-language edition (1968) is of interest to collectors of Boris Vian, French surrealist fiction in translation, Grove Press imprints, and 1960s avant-garde literature.
About: Very Good copy in the original white dust jacket with striking surrealist dreamscape illustration to front panel and portrait of Boris Vian to rear; dust jacket with some rubbing and light wear to extremities and a small closed tear to head of spine; boards clean and binding firm; pages bright and clean; a handsome and collectible copy of the first English-language edition of Vian's most celebrated novel, with the Raymond Queneau blurb — “The greatest love novel of our time” — to front panel.
Details:
- Title: Mood Indigo (L'Écume des jours)
- Author: Boris Vian
- Translator: John Sturrock
- Publisher: Grove Press, New York
- Publication Date: 1968
- Edition: First English-Language Edition
- Binding: Hardcover
- Condition: Very Good
- Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good (some rubbing and light wear; small closed tear to spine head)
Synopsis: Grove Press first English-language edition, 1968; translated by John Sturrock; original white dust jacket with surrealist dreamscape illustration; Raymond Queneau blurb to front panel; Boris Vian portrait to rear; appealing to collectors of French surrealist fiction, Grove Press imprints, and 1960s avant-garde literature.
Review: Boris Vian's Mood Indigo (L'Écume des jours), first published in French in 1947, is a surrealist love story set in a fantastical Paris where a water lily grows in a woman's lung and the world contracts around the lovers as her illness progresses. Widely regarded as Vian's masterpiece, it was championed by Raymond Queneau and Jean-Paul Sartre and has become a cult classic of 20th century French literature. John Sturrock's 1968 Grove Press translation brought the novel to English-language readers for the first time, and this first edition — with its distinctive white jacket and dreamlike cover art — is a significant and increasingly sought-after collectible.