The Pure and the Impure

Journey through the sexual underworld of Belle Époque Paris in the first new English translation of Colette’s masterpiece in nearly sixty years.

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. 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 various demimondes of the Parisian Belle Époque: We meet cross-dressing lesbians, a sapphic poet, Don Juans male and female, and Colette’s onetime lover 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 an 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.