Foam of the Daze

Boris Vian wrote prose and poetry, worked as a journalist, wrote screenplays and appeared in films (a dozen and a half, to be precise), sang and composed songs (about four hundred in total). It’s a rare case when intellectual prose is also funny—but that’s exactly what Boris Vian’s main work, “Foam of Days,” is like. An engrossing, fantastic, flamboyant mystery novel, it is still printed worldwide in million-copy runs. Not by accident, F. Begbeder placed it in the top ten of his global literary hit parade.