Best 1947 Adventures (8)
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June 12, 2017
One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1947 adventure novels. Happy 70th anniversary!
Boris Vian‘s secret-identity adventure The Dead All Have the Same Skin (Les morts ont tous la même peau).
Dan Parker, a white man working as a bouncer in New York, is getting tired of his own hard-living ways — the drunks he tosses out of the club, the violence, the extramarital sex with black women. But when Richard, a black man, turns up claiming to be his half-brother and demands money, Dan becomes terrified that he’ll lose everything. (“Five years and not a soul suspects it. No one has the slightest idea that a man of mixed blood, a colored man, has been the one pounding on their heads each and every night.”) The appearance that Dan has been presenting to the world is a false one; his true identity is a protean one; and he’ll do whatever it takes to prevent Richard from exposing his secret. Brutal violence ensues.
Fun fact: This is the French author and musician’s second book, after I Spit on Your Graves (1946), published under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan. Reissued by TamTam Books.
Let me know if I’ve missed any 1947 adventures that you particularly admire.