Author : Jean Genet
Publisher : Grove Press
ISBN 13 : 9780802130136
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)
Book Synopsis Our Lady of the Flowers by : Jean Genet
Download or read book Our Lady of the Flowers written by Jean Genet and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jean Genet's masterpiece, composed entirely in the solitude of his prison cell. With an introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre. Jean Genet's first, and arguably greatest, novel was written while he was in prison. As Sartre recounts in his introduction, Genet penned this work on the brown paper which inmates were supposed to use to fold bags as a form of occupational therapy. The masterpiece he managed to produce under those difficult conditions is a lyrical portrait of the criminal underground of Paris and the thieves, murderers and pimps who occupied it. Genet approached this world through his protagonist, Divine, a male transvestite prostitute. In the world of Our Lady of the Flowers, moral conventions are turned on their head. Sinners are portrayed as saints and when evil is not celebrated outright, it is at least viewed with a benign indifference. Whether one finds Genet's work shocking or thrilling, the novel remains almost as revolutionary today as when it was first published in 1943 in a limited edition, thanks to the help of one its earliest admirers, Jean Cocteau.