The Pure and the Impure

This is a new book. Condition: Brand New.

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 Epoque: 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 Chevaliere-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.

Book details and technical specifications

Format: Hardback
ISBN13: 9781324075233
Published: July 2026

Number of pages: 176
Width: 147 mm
Height: 218 mm
Depth: 20 mm

Publisher: WW Norton & Co