Our Lady of the Flowers, often considered Genet's masterpiece, was written in the cell of a French prison where he was being held for theft. Here is the darker side of Montmartre, a world of pimps, thieves, prostitutes, queens and blackmailers, where 'morality' in the common sense of the word has no meaning. The story of Divine, a drag-queen prostitute, is interwoven with that of one of his lovers, a young man due to be arrested for murder. A story of sex, crime and death, Our Lady of the Flowers is a powerful and original debut novel, which put Genet into the front rank of French writers.

The Thief's Journal is perhaps Jean Genet's most authentically autobiographical novel; an account of his impoverished travels across 1930s Europe. The narrator is guilty of vagrancy, petty theft and prostitution, but his writing transforms such degradations into an inverted moral code, where criminality and delinquency become heroic. With a holy trinity of his own making - homosexuality, theft and betrayal - in The Thief's Journal Genet produced a startlingly powerful novel without precedent.

Celine's third novel, first published in 1944 but dealing with events taking place during the First World War, Guignol's Band follows the narrator's meanderings through London after he has been demobilized due to a war injury. The result is a frank, uncompromising, yet grotesquely funny portrayal of the English capital's seedy underworld, peopled by prostitutes, pimps and schemers. Often considered to be Celine's funniest work, Guignol's Band showcases its author's idiosyncratic style at its finest, frantically blending slang, invective, onomatopoeia with literary language, and bridging the gap between gritty realism and absurd mysticism.

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

Muerto en Paris, donde paso los ultimos anos de su vida bajo seudonimo, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), irlandes de nacimiento pero ingles de devocion, tuvo que afrontar un escandaloso proceso por B+ultraje a la moralB; en la rigida sociedad victoriana, que habria de llevarle a la carcel y al exilio. Andre Gide (Paris 1869-1951, premio Nobel de Literatura en 1947) no ofrece aqui una biografia de Wilde o un ensayo sobre su obra, sino que recoge dos B+semblanzasB; la primera, escrita apenas un ano despues de la muerte del autor de Balada de la carcel de Reading, es una elegia a la memoria de un escritor que, defendiendo los principios del B+arte por el arteB; , paga, paradojicamente, la practica del arte con la propia vida; la segunda es un analisis, antes moral (aqui sin comillas) que literario, del poema De Profundis, que Wilde escribiera en prision en forma de carta dirigida a Lord Douglas, el personaje desencadenante de su desgracia, y que no se publicaria hasta 1905, postumamente. Dos textos, en suma, que nos hablan de la categoria humana y artistica de dos escritores de nuestro tiempo.

Muerto en Paris, donde paso los ultimos anos de su vida bajo seudonimo, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), irlandes de nacimiento pero ingles de devocion, tuvo que afrontar un escandaloso proceso por B+ultraje a la moralB; en la rigida sociedad victoriana, que habria de llevarle a la carcel y al exilio. Andre Gide (Paris 1869-1951, premio Nobel de Literatura en 1947) no ofrece aqui una biografia de Wilde o un ensayo sobre su obra, sino que recoge dos B+semblanzasB; la primera, escrita apenas un ano despues de la muerte del autor de Balada de la carcel de Reading, es una elegia a la memoria de un escritor que, defendiendo los principios del B+arte por el arteB; , paga, paradojicamente, la practica del arte con la propia vida; la segunda es un analisis, antes moral (aqui sin comillas) que literario, del poema De Profundis, que Wilde escribiera en prision en forma de carta dirigida a Lord Douglas, el personaje desencadenante de su desgracia, y que no se publicaria hasta 1905, postumamente. Dos textos, en suma, que nos hablan de la categoria humana y artistica de dos escritores de nuestro tiempo.