In nineteenth century Paris, the young Charles Baudelaire roams the streets. Dressed impeccably and lost in the decadences of alcohol and opium, he is about to meet one woman destined to change his life forever: the beautiful Haitian cabaret singer, Jeanne Duval.
Inspiring Baudelaire's most infamous poems - leading to the banning of his masterwork, Les Fleurs du Mal, and a scandalous public trial for obscenity - Duval becomes Baudelaire's muse, the catalyst for a legacy spanning centuries. Unfolding among the bars and salons during revolutionary times, Black Venus is an intoxicating story of love and betrayal in which drugs, absinthe and lust prove the making, and the destruction, of a great poet.
