Our Lady of the Flowers


Published by Grove Atlantic
The shattering novel of underground life the New York Times called “a cry of rapture and horror . . . the purest lyrical genius.”

Jean Genet’s debut novel Our Lady of the Flowers, which is often considered to be his masterpiece, was written entirely in the solitude of a prison cell. A semi- autobiographical account of one man’s journey through the Paris demi-monde, dubbed “the epic of masturbation” by no less a figure than Jean-Paul Sartre, the novel’s exceptional value lies in its exquisite ambiguity.

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