Heartsnatcher

Set in a bizarre and slightly sinister town where the elderly are auctioned off at an Old Folks Fair, the townspeople assail the priest in hopes of making it rain, and the official town scapegoat bears the shame of the citizens by fishing junk out of the river with his teeth.

Heartsnatcher is both Boris Vian’s most playful and most serious work. The main character is Clementine, a mother who punishes her husband for causing her the excruciating pain of giving birth to three babies. As they age, she becomes increasingly obsessed with protecting them, going so far as to build an invisible wall around their property.

Boris Vian (1920-1959) was an engineer, inventor, jazz trumpeter, actor, recording artist, and prolific writer.

Stanley Chapman (1925-2009) was a British architect, designer, writer, and translator, most notably of Vian (Mood Indigo) and Raymond Queneau. He was the founder of Outrapo and a member of Oulipo, the College de ’Pataphysique (of which Vian was also a member), and the Lewis Carroll Society.

Raymond Queneau (1903-1976) is acknowledged as one of the most influential of modern French writers, having helped determine the shape of twentieth-century French literature, especially in his role with the Oulipo, a group of authors that includes Italo Calvino, Georges Perec, and Harry Mathews, among others.

John Sturrock is a literary journalist, sometimes deputy editor of the Times Literary Supplement, and consulting editor at the London Review of Books. He has written widely on French literature, and is an accomplished translator.