An edition of The gutter in the sky (1948)

Our Lady of the Flowers

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Our Lady of the Flowers
Jean Genet, Jean Genet
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  • 3.3 (7 ratings)
  • 88 Want to read
  • 2 Currently reading
  • 9 Have read

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Last edited by dcapillae
September 7, 2025 | History
An edition of The gutter in the sky (1948)

Our Lady of the Flowers

  • 3.3 (7 ratings)
  • 88 Want to read
  • 2 Currently reading
  • 9 Have read

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.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
266

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Our Lady of Flowers
Our Lady of Flowers
March 1976, Grove Press, Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated
in English
Cover of: Our Lady Of The Flowers
Our Lady Of The Flowers
1973, Panther Books
in English
Cover of: OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS
OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS
1973-01-01, Panther / Granada
in English
Cover of: Our Lady of the Flowers
Our Lady of the Flowers
1970, Bantam
in English
Cover of: Jean Genet Our Lady Of The Flowers
Jean Genet Our Lady Of The Flowers
1969, Panther
in English
Cover of: Our Lady of the Flowers
Our Lady of the Flowers
1968, Collectors Publications
in English
Cover of: Our lady of the flowers.
Our lady of the flowers.
1965, Modern Library
in English
Cover of: Our lady of the flowers
Our lady of the flowers
1964, Anthony Blond
in English
Cover of: OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS.
OUR LADY OF THE FLOWERS.
1964-12-01, Blond
Cover of: Our Lady of the Flowers.
Our Lady of the Flowers.
1963, Grove Press
in English and Undetermined
Cover of: The gutter in the sky
The gutter in the sky
1955, A. Levy
in English

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Book Details


Edition Notes

38 pages of publisher's advertisements at end.

Translation of: Notre dame des fleurs.

"First American printing."

"Complete & unexpurgated"--Cover.

"A Collectors publication"--Cover.

Originally published: New York : Grove Press, 1963. With introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre.

This reprint omits the introduction by Sartre.

Published in
City of Industry, Calif
Genre
Fiction.

The Physical Object

Pagination
266 p. ;
Number of pages
266

Edition Identifiers

Open Library
OL22949670M
OCLC/WorldCat
40667685

Work Identifiers

Work ID
OL1281850W

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."

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Download catalog record: RDF / JSON / OPDS | Wikipedia citation
September 7, 2025 Edited by dcapillae Merge works (MRID: 235815)
October 25, 2021 Edited by Jenner Merge works
December 15, 2009 Edited by WorkBot link works
April 26, 2009 Edited by ImportBot add OCLC number
February 12, 2009 Created by ImportBot Imported from San Francisco Public Library record