An edition of The gutter in the sky (1948)

Notre-dame des fleurs

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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 MARC Bot
December 11, 2025 | History
An edition of The gutter in the sky (1948)

Notre-dame des fleurs

  • 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
Publisher
Gallimard
Language
French

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: Notre-dame des fleurs
Notre-dame des fleurs
January 1, 1998, Gallimard
Paperback in French
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.
1965, Modern Library
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
1964, Anthony Blond
in English
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


The Physical Object

Format
Paperback
Dimensions
7.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
Weight
9.1 ounces

Edition Identifiers

Open Library
OL9853206M
ISBN 10
2070751473
ISBN 13
9782070751471
OCLC/WorldCat
472577277
LibraryThing
21491
Goodreads
3397512

Work Identifiers

Work ID
OL1281850W

Source records

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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