The Pure and the Impure

Description

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.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Contributors: Colette,Rachel Careau (Translator)
Published: 07/07/2026
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9781324075233
Pages: 176
Weight: 0.52lbs
Size: 0.91″ H x 8.41″ L x 5.61″ W

About the Author
Careau, Rachel: – Rachel Careau‘s translations include Colette’s Chéri and The End of Chéri. A 2019 NEA Literature Translation Fellow, she lives in Hudson, New York.Colette: – Colette (1873-1954) is considered one of the greatest French literary stylists of the twentieth century.