GANET, Jean - Our Lady of the Flowers - [Introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre] - (Paperback)

Book still in very good condition - Previous ownership stamp inside.   >>>  Jean Genet's seminal Our Lady Of The Flowers (1943) is generally considered to be his finest fictional work. The first draft was written while Genet was incarcerated in a French prison; when the manuscript was discovered and destroyed by officials, Genet, still a prisoner, immediately set about writing it again. It isn't difficult to understand how and why Genet was able to reproduce the novel under such circumstances, because Our Lady Of The Flowers is nothing less than a mythic recreation of Genet's past and then - present history. Combining memories with facts, fantasies, speculations, irrational dreams, tender emotion, empathy, and philosophical insights, Genet probably made his isolation bearable by retreating into a world not only of his own making, but one which he had total control over.   >>>   Nothing if not hypnotic. Genet's prose is entirely unpredictable and he does something here I wouldn't have thought possible or feasible or even desirable. He takes all these Parisian homosexuals (his word), some of them evildoers -- murderers, thieves, prossies, assorted toughs -- though not necessarily evil people, it's just that like all of us they are capable of evil and from time to time actually commit it -- and he raises them to near saintly levels. That's how big his empathy is.   (Goodreads)

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