The Pure and the Impure

The Pure and the Impure

208 pages
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Published: 1 Jan 1932
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Editions
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Details

This edition

ISBN: 9780940322486

Format: Paperback

Language: English

Publisher: NYRB Classics

Publication date: 30 September 2000

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Description

Colette herself considered The Pure and the Impure her best book, "the nearest I shall ever come to writing an autobiography." This guided tour of the erotic netherworld with which Colette was so intimately acquainted begins in the darkness and languor of a fashionable opium den. It continues as a series of unforgettable encounters with men and, especially, women whose lives have been improbably and yet permanently transfigured by the strange power of desire. Lucid and lyrical, The Pure and the Impure stands out as one of modern literature's subtlest reckonings, not only with the varieties of sexual experience, but with the always unlikely nature of love.