An edition of The gutter in the sky (1948)

Our Lady of the Flowers.

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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 bitnapper
September 19, 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

"Novel by Jean Genet, written while he was in prison for burglary and published in 1944 in French as Notre-Dame des fleurs. The novel and the author were championed by many contemporary writers, including Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Cocteau, who helped engineer a pardon for Genet. A wildly imaginative fantasy of the Parisian underworld, the novel tells the story of Divine, a male prostitute who consorts with thieves, pimps, murderers, and other criminals and who has many sexual adventures. Written in lyrical, dreamlike prose, the novel affirms a new moral order, one in which criminals are saints, evil is glorified, and conventional taboos are freely violated."--THE MERRIAM-WEBSTER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LITERATURE.

Publish Date
Publisher
Grove Press
Language
English, Undetermined
Pages
318

Buy this book

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.
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

Published in
New York

Classifications

Library of Congress
PZ3.G2866 Ou3

The Physical Object

Pagination
318 p.
Number of pages
318

Edition Identifiers

Open Library
OL5820622M
Internet Archive
ourladyofflowers0000gene
LCCN
61006715
OCLC/WorldCat
342010
LibraryThing
21491

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."

Work Description

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.

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September 19, 2025 Edited by bitnapper merge authors
September 7, 2025 Edited by dcapillae Merge works (MRID: 235815)
January 24, 2010 Edited by WorkBot add more information to works
December 9, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page