Buy this book
![Loading indicator](/images/ajax-loader-bar.gif)
Our Lady of the Flowers (Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs) is the debut novel of French writer Jean Genet, first published in 1943. The free-flowing, poetic novel is a largely autobiographical account of a man's journey through the Parisian underworld. The characters are drawn after their real-life counterparts, who are mostly homosexuals living on the fringes of society.
The novel tells the story of Divine, a drag queen who, when the novel opens, has died of tuberculosis and been canonised as a result. The narrator tells us that the stories he is telling are mainly to amuse himself whilst he passes his sentence in prison – and the highly erotic, often explicitly sexual, stories are spun to assist his masturbation. Jean-Paul Sartre called it "the epic of masturbation".
Divine lives in an attic room overlooking Montmartre cemetery, which she shares with various lovers, the most important of whom is a pimp called Darling Daintyfoot. One day Darling brings home a young hoodlum and murderer, dubbed Our Lady of the Flowers. Our Lady is eventually arrested and tried, and executed. Death and ecstasy accompany the acts of every character, as Genet performs a transvaluation of all values, making betrayal the highest moral value, murder an act of virtue and sexual appeal.
Buy this book
![Loading indicator](/images/ajax-loader-bar.gif)
Previews available in: English French
Showing 9 featured editions. View all 51 editions?
Edition | Availability |
---|---|
1 |
zzzz
|
2 |
cccc
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
3
Our Lady of Flowers
March 1976, Grove Press, Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated
in English
039417903X 9780394179032
|
cccc
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
4 |
aaaa
|
5 |
cccc
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
6 |
cccc
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
7 |
cccc
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
8 |
cccc
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
9
Notre Dame Des Fleurs
Publish date unknown, Folio
Mass Market Paperback
in French
2070368602 9782070368600
|
zzzz
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
|
Book Details
Edition Notes
Translation of Notre Dame des Fleurs
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
First Sentence
"Our Lady of the Flowers, which is often considered to be Genet's masterpiece, was written entirely in the solitude of a prison cell."
Community Reviews (0)
Feedback?November 16, 2022 | Edited by AgentSapphire | //covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/13004979-S.jpg |
November 16, 2022 | Edited by AgentSapphire | Update covers |
November 16, 2022 | Edited by AgentSapphire | merge authors |
November 16, 2022 | Edited by AgentSapphire | Merge works |
December 9, 2009 | Created by WorkBot | add works page |