Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Pure and the Impure

The Pure and the Impure

Colette
Careau, Rachel

Hardcover

General FictionGeneral GLBTQIA FictionLiterary Fiction

Publisher Price: $29.99

ISBN10: 1324075236
ISBN13: 9781324075233
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: Jul 7 2026
Pages: 176
Weight: 0.52
Height: 0.91 Width: 5.61 Depth: 8.41
Language: English

Lyrical, allusive, sometimes obscure, yet precise, The Pure and the Impure has elicited equal parts consternation and praise since its publication nearly 100 years ago. Colette herself was unequivocal: I believe it to be my best book. Through strikingly vivid and evocative portraits, many of them of her friends and lovers, Colette explores varieties of sexual expression, gender identity, love, and sensual pleasure. Decades ahead of its time in contemplating queerness and women's sexuality, The Pure and the Impure provides a fascinating window into the sexual demimondes of the Parisian Belle Époque: We meet cross-dressing lesbians, a sapphic poet, Don Juans male and female, the circle of gay men whose companionship saw Colette through the difficult years of her first marriage, and Colette's onetime lover Missy--La Chevalière--who might today be a transgender man. At the same time, the book offers a unique portrait of a complex and often contradictory character: Colette herself. The brilliantly ingenious (Lydia Davis) translator Rachel Careau offers readers a lean, elegant, and highly readable rendition that reproduces Colette's extraordinary musicality, making her perfect, lapidary and truth-bearing sentences (Terry Castle) sing for English readers.

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