Our Lady of the Flowers

Jean Genets first and arguably greatest novel was written while he was inprison. As Sartre recounts in his introduction Genet penned this work on thebrown paper... » 

Jean Genets first and arguably greatest novel was written while he was inprison. As Sartre recounts in his introduction Genet penned this work on thebrown paper which inmates were supposed to use to fold bags as a form ofoccupational therapy. The masterpiece he managed to produce under thosedifficult conditions is a lyrical portrait of the criminal underground of Parisand the thieves murderers and pimps who occupied it. Genet approached thisworld through his protagonist Divine a male transvestite prostitute. In theworld 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 isat least viewed with a benign indifference. Whether one finds Genets workshocking or thrilling the novel remains almost as revolutionary today as whenit was first published in 1943 in a limited edition thanks to the help of oneits earliest admirers Jean Cocteau. «