Vertigo (13 page)

Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac met at an awards dinner. Narcejac was receiving the 1948
Prix
du roman d’aventures
, which is awarded for the best detective novel of the year in France, and which Boileau had already won ten years earlier. They got talking, and several years later, their first collaboration was published.

They wanted to try and develop a new type of crime fiction. They were tired of British who-dunnits and hardboiled American private eyes—they wanted to create a new style of mystery with the victim at its centre, albeit a victim who might not know they are a victim, and might even be a murderer! They went on to form an extraordinarily successful partnership, with Boileau supplying the fiendish, almost fantastical plots, and Narcejac the crucial characterization. As Boileau himself said, Narcejac “humanizes the most extraordinary situations… He turns a witch or a ghost into someone you might meet on the Metro”. And, much like Hitchcock’s bomb that must never explode, Boileau-Narcejac had one golden rule: the protagonist can never wake up from their nightmare.

Their first collaboration,
She Who Was No More
, appeared in 1952 and, so the story goes, Alfred Hitchcock was desperate to acquire the film rights. He was beaten to it by Henri-Georges Clouzot but moved heaven and earth to get the rights to
Vertigo
when it was published in 1954. Little did he know that Boileau-Narcejac had actually written it with him in mind!

If you enjoyed
Vertigo
’s hallucinatory plot and relentless tension, then you should take a look at
She Who Was No More
—Boileau-Narcejac’s first book, and a classic thriller in the same mind-bending vein as
Vertigo
.

If you feel like something a little different, why not get hold of a copy of Soji Shimada’s
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
, the strangely brilliant, and utterly gruesome, locked-room puzzle that kicked off the Japanese
honkaku
“logic mystery” tradition?

The Murdered Banker

The Mystery of the Three Orchids

The Hotel of the Three Roses

The Disappearance of Signora Giulia

Vertigo

She Who Was No More

I Was Jack Mortimer

Master of the Day of Judgment

Little Apple

St Peter’s Snow

The Tokyo Zodiac Murders

Pushkin Press was founded in 1997, and publishes novels, essays, memoirs, children’s books—everything from timeless classics to the urgent and contemporary.

Our books represent exciting, high-quality writing from around the world: we publish some of the twentieth century’s most widely acclaimed, brilliant authors such as Stefan Zweig, Marcel Aymé, Antal Szerb, Paul Morand and Yasushi Inoue, as well as compelling and award-winning contemporary writers, including Andrés Neuman, Edith Pearlman and Ryu Murakami.

Pushkin Press publishes the world’s best stories, to be read and read again. Here are just some of the titles from our long and varied list. For more amazing stories, visit
www.pushkinpress.com
.

THE SPECTRE OF ALEXANDER WOLF

GAITO GAZDANOV

‘A mesmerising work of literature’ Antony Beevor

BINOCULAR VISION

EDITH PEARLMAN

‘A genius of the short story’ Mark Lawson,
Guardian

TRAVELLER OF THE CENTURY

ANDRÉS NEUMAN

‘A beautiful, accomplished novel: as ambitious as it is generous, as moving as it is smart’ Juan Gabriel Vásquez,
Guardian

BEWARE OF PITY

STEFAN ZWEIG

‘Zweig’s fictional masterpiece’
Guardian

THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY

STEFAN ZWEIG

‘The World of Yesterday
is one of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century, as perfect in its evocation of the world Zweig loved, as it is in its portrayal of how that world was destroyed’ David Hare

JOURNEY BY MOONLIGHT

ANTAL SZERB

‘Just divine… makes you imagine the author has had private access to your own soul’ Nicholas Lezard,
Guardian

BONITA AVENUE

PETER BUWALDA

‘One wild ride: a swirling helix of a family saga… a new writer as toe-curling as early Roth, as roomy as Franzen and as caustic as Houellebecq’
Sunday Telegraph

THE PARROTS

FILIPPO BOLOGNA

‘A five-star satire on literary vanity… a wonderful, surprising novel’
Metro

I WAS JACK MORTIMER

ALEXANDER LERNET-HOLENIA

‘Terrific… a truly clever, rather wonderful book that both plays with and defies genre’ Eileen Battersby,
Irish Times

SONG FOR AN APPROACHING STORM

PETER FRÖBERG IDLING

‘Beautifully evocative… a must-read novel’
Daily Mail

THE RABBIT BACK LITERATURE SOCIETY

PASI ILMARI JÄÄSKELÄINEN

‘Wonderfully knotty… a very grown-up fantasy masquerading as quirky fable. Unexpected, thrilling and absurd’
Sunday Telegraph

RED LOVE: THE STORY OF AN EAST GERMAN FAMILY

MAXIM LEO

‘Beautiful and supremely touching… an unbearably poignant description of a world that no longer exists’
Sunday Telegraph

THE BREAK

PIETRO GROSSI

‘Small and perfectly formed… reaching its end leaves the reader desirous to start all over again’
Independent

FROM THE FATHERLAND, WITH LOVE

RYU MURAKAMI

‘If Haruki is
The Beatles
of Japanese literature, Ryu is its
Rolling Stones
’ David Pilling

BUTTERFLIES IN NOVEMBER

AUÐUR AVA ÓLAFSDÓTTIR

‘A funny, moving and occasionally bizarre exploration of life’s upheavals and reversals’
Financial Times

BARCELONA SHADOWS

MARC PASTOR

‘As gruesome as it is gripping… the writing is extraordinarily vivid… Highly recommended’
Independent

THE LAST DAYS

LAURENT SEKSIK

‘Mesmerising… Seksik’s portrait of Zweig’s final months is dignified and tender’
Financial Times

BY BLOOD

ELLEN ULLMAN

‘Delicious and intriguing’
Daily Telegraph

WHILE THE GODS WERE SLEEPING

ERWIN MORTIER

‘A monumental, phenomenal book’
De Morgen

THE BRETHREN

ROBERT MERLE

‘A master of the historical novel’
Guardian