Jean Genet


Jean Genet (19 December 1910 – 15 April 1986) was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond, petty criminal and prostitute, but he later took to writing. His major works include the novels Querelle of Brest, The Thief's Journal and Our Lady of the Flowers, and the plays The Balcony,
The Blacks, The Maids and The Screens. Genet's primary theme was the outcast in society, particularly criminals, homosexuals and homosexual criminals, whom he presented in a strong romantic and mythopoeic light. In later life he espoused controversial causes, including the US Black Panthers and Palestinian fedayeen. Many of his works have a strong autobiographical component. There is a lengthy article on Genet on Wikipedia


Wikipedia (en français) commence:
Jean Genet (Paris, 19 décembre 1910 - id., 15 avril 1986) est un écrivain, poète et auteur dramatique français. Par une écriture raffinée et riche, Jean Genet exalte la perversion, le mal et l'érotisme à travers la célébration de personnages ambivalents au sein de mondes interlopes.




The following books by Jean Genet are currently available from Arbery Books, listed in order of first publication.


Notre-Dame-Des-Fleurs [in French]
1966 (first published 1943), Barbezat L’Arbalète, Lyon
Fair to Good, £6.00
Unusual two-columned edition of the classic novel.

more details and photograph
The Thief's Journal
translated by Bernard Frechtman
 1978 (first published in France 1949)
Penguin, Harmondsworth, UK
Very Good, £4.00
 "Genet is now (mainly) out of prison. . . . Wherever he turns up, he joins the courts of the criminal, homosexual underworld, amongst a retinue of creeps, where the princes are always handsome and the victims willing."

more details
Un Captif Amoureux [in French]
1986 1st edition, Gallimard / Club Express
Very Good, £12.50

Genet's last book: An account of his sojourn in Jordan in 1970 with young Palestinians who were training to wrest their homeland back from the Israelis in the months leading up to Black September.

more details and photographs





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