This novel is based on the life of Charles Baudelaire and the relationship he enjoyed — or endured — with his Haiti-born mistress, his Black Venus, Jeanne Duval.
We first see him in 1842, a young poet of 20, making his dandyish way through the slums of Paris to meet his friends at a cabaret theatre for an evening of wine and hashish. Here he will encounter for the first time his future muse. She is voluptuous, in a long red dress, singing risqué songs. In no time he is unlacing her boots and preparing to squander the legacy which he is shortly expecting.
However, there are, as the author shows us, three people in this relationship, and the third one is Baudelaire’s mother. Charles was five when his father died, and for two blissful years he and his mother were everything to each other.
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