The famous French writer Boris Vian was also known as an inventor, songwriter and jazz performer, journalist, screenwriter, and critic. These activities would have been enough for several lifetimes, and not for the 39 years allotted to him. An expert and connoisseur of the “black novel,” he published several works under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan, and they were a noisy, scandalous success. This edition includes the novel “All the Dead Have the Same Skin” (1946) and the short story “Dogs, Passion and Death,” an example of so-called sadistic prose. As a result of a high-profile trial, the author was even sentenced to prison.