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Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs

  • Jean Genet

3.17

6 ratings

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.

Genres

  • Fiction
  • Gay men
  • Prisoners
  • Transvestites
  • Gay prisoners
  • Continental european fiction (fictional works by one author)
  • Translations
  • French fiction
  • Romance literature
  • LGBTQ novels before Stonewall
  • Cross-dressers
  • Homosexuels masculins
  • Romans, nouvelles
  • Prisonniers
  • Travestis
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About the author

  • Jean Genet

    19 December 1910 - 15 April 1986

    3.52

    21 ratings · 231 works

Editions

  • Edition cover

    Folio

  • Edition cover

    Olympia Press

    2004

  • Edition cover

    Grove Press

    1963

  • Edition cover

    Faber and Faber

    2009

Edition cover

Saggiatore

1996

  • Edition cover

    1st Evergreen edition

    Grove Press

    January 1, 1987

  • Edition cover

    Bantam Books

    1964

  • Edition cover

    Bantam Books

    1968

  • Edition cover

    Grove Press

    1991

  • Edition cover

    Grove Press

    January 12, 1994

  • Edition cover

    Modern Library

    1965

  • Edition cover

    Grove Press

    1963

  • Edition cover

    Gallimard

    January 1, 1998

  • Edition cover

    Anthony Blond

    1964

  • Edition cover

    L'Arbalète

    1948

  • Edition cover

    Barbezat

    1948

  • Edition cover

    Faber & Faber, Limited

    2019

  • Edition cover

    Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated

    1994

  • Edition cover

    Panther

    1966

  • Edition cover

    Grove Press

    1963

  • Edition cover

    French & European Pubns

    October 1, 1976

  • Edition cover

    L'Arbalète

    1948

  • Edition cover

    Faber and Faber

    1973

  • Edition cover

    L'Arbalète

    1948

  • Edition cover

    Castle Books, Distributed by Book Sales

    1963

  • Edition cover

    Collectors Publications

    1968

  • Edition cover

    [Gallimard]

    1976

  • Edition cover

    Barbezat, l'Arbalète

    1948

  • Edition cover

    Barbezat

    1966

  • Edition cover

    Bantam Books

    1968

  • Edition cover

    Grove Press

    1963

  • Edition cover

    Gallimard

    1990

  • Edition cover

    Faber

    1990

  • Edition cover

    French & European Pubns

    October 1, 1976

  • Edition cover

    L'Arbalète

    1948

  • Edition cover

    Bantam Books, 1968, c1963.

    1968

  • Edition cover

    Olympia Press

    1957

  • Edition cover

    Anthony Bond

    1964

  • Edition cover

    Faber & Faber

    1973

  • Edition cover

    Blond

    1964

  • Edition cover

    Grove P.

    1963

  • Edition cover

    Anthony Blond

    1964

  • Edition cover

    Paladin

    1988

  • Edition cover

    Panther

    1966

  • Edition cover

    Marc Barbezat-L'Arbalète

    1948

  • Edition cover

    Marc Barbezat-L'Arbalète

    1976

  • Edition cover

    Marc Barbezat L'Arbalète

    1948

  • Edition cover

  • Edition cover

  • Edition cover

    Grove Press, Grove/Atlantic, Incorporated

    March 1976