Colette herself considered <i>The Pure and the Impure</i> her best book, &quot;the nearest I shall ever come to writing an autobiography.&quot; This guided tour of the erotic netherworld with which Colette was so intimately acquainted begins in the darkness and languor of a fashionable opium den. It continues as a series of unforgettable encounters with men and, especially, women whose lives have been improbably and yet permanently transfigured by the strange power of desire. Lucid and lyrical, <i>The Pure and the Impure</i> stands out as one of modern literature's subtlest reckonings not only with the varieties of sexual experience, but with the always unlikely nature of love.