“Our Lady of the Flowers, which is often considered to be Genet’s masterpiece, was written entirely in the solitude of a prison cell.  The exceptional value of the work lies in its ambiguity.  It appears at first to have only one subject, Fatality: the characters are puppets of destiny.  But we quickly discover that this pitiless Providence is really the counterpart of a sovereign—indeed divine—freedom, that of the author.  Our Lady of the Flowers is the most pessimistic of books.  With fiendish application it leads human creatures to downfall and death.  And yet, in its strange language it presents this downfall as a triumph.  The rogues and wretches of whom it speaks all seem to be heroes, to be of the elect.  But what is far more astonishing, the book itself is an act of the rashest optimism.”

                        -from the Introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre