"IT IS NO EXAGGERATION TO SAY DAY OF THE JACKAL HAS INFLUENCED A GENERATION OF THRILLER WRITERS": FIRST EDITION OF THE DAY OF THE JACKAL, SIGNED BY FREDERICK FORSYTH

FORSYTH, Frederick. The Day of the Jackal. London: Hutchinson of London, (1971). Octavo, original red paper boards, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box. $3200.

First edition, precedes the American edition, of Forsyth's award-winning first novel, boldly signed by him.

Winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel, Forsyth's first thriller won immediate acclaim as "a strikingly successful thriller… It makes such comparable books as The Manchurian Candidate and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold seem like Hardy Boy mysteries" (New York Times). Drawing on events such as a 1962 assassination attempt on De Gaulle, made by Alain de Bougrenet de la Tocnaye, Forsyth returned from years as a war correspondent in Africa to write his novel "in just 35 days, a feat he describes as something 'not quite so crazy when you think of twelve pages a day, times that by thirty-five and there you go, there's your novel" (BBC). "It is no exaggeration to say Day of the Jackal has influenced a generation of thriller writers, from Jack Higgins to Ken Follett… Before, thrillers were self-evidently works of the imagination. Forsyth changed all that; never before had a popular novelist created a world that seemed indistinguishable from real life. His debut had a documentary sense of realism that all but convinced the public they were reading a work of non-fiction" (Guardian). Basis for the popular 1973 film by director Fred Zinneman, starring Edward Fox.

Book with only light soiling to fore-edges and endpapers; faint trace of edge-wear to colorful and beautiful price-clipped dust jacket. A handsome about-fine copy.