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eBook Category: Classic Literature
eBook Description: 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 over which he had total control. The imprisoned narrator "Jean," who may or may not be identical with the author, masturbates regularly; like a perpetual motion machine, his fantasies fuel his writing and his writing spurs on his fantasies in turn. Nothing illustrates this more than the brief scene in which self--sustaining "Jean" describes his Tiamat.... Legs thrown over shoulders, "Jean" is not only the serpent that eats its tail but becomes a small, circular, self--imbibing universe all his own. A motto attributed to the alchemists could be the narrator's own: "Every man his own wife." Though the narrative is not the primary focus of this or any of Genet's novels, most responsible critics have failed to remark on the fact that the narrative of Our Lady of the Flowers is the least compelling of any found in his five major novels. Our Lady of the Flowers, does, however, lay the basic groundwork for the novels to come: The Miracle of the Rose, Funeral Rites, Querelle, and The Thief's Journal (all written between 1944 and 1948). While Our Lady of the Flowers is Genet's only novel to feature a predominantly effeminate homosexual man (Divine, who is at least partially a transvestite) as its protagonist ("Our Lady of the Flowers," a virile young thug, is a secondary character), most of the other elements of the book will be very familiar to those who have

eBook Publisher: Disruptive Publishing, Inc.
Fictionwise Release Date: January 2005

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [282 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [223 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [241 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [899 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [283 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [213 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [292 KB] , hiebook (KML) [539 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [263 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [231 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [287 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [306 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [353 KB]
Words: 85905
Reading time: 245-343 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED