Excerpts from the novels, plays, and poems of the French convict, prostitute, and literary artist join notes from his film, The Penal Colony, letters, essays, and a rare interview, all edited by a contemporary biographer.[...]

Genet's sensual and brutal portrait of World War II unfolds between the poles of his grief for his lover Jean, killed in the Resistance during the liberation of Paris, and his perverse attraction to the collaborator Riton. Elegaic, macabre, chimerical, Funeral Rites is a dark meditation on the mirro[...]

In a brothel of an unnamed French city the madam, Irma, directs a series of fantastical scenarios. The patrons of the brothel wait anxiously for the chief of police to arrive, but in his place comes the queen's envoy to inform that the figureheads of the establishment have been killed in the uprisin[...]

Composed in 1943 while the author was incarcerated in La Sante prison, this title features Harcamone, whom the author first encountered at Mettray and who resurfaces, unsurprisingly, in the adult prison of Fontevrault - now a murderer, and, in the world-turned-upside-down of the author's vision, a q[...]

What exactly is a black? First of all, what's his colour?' Stereotyping, masking and clowning would be the tools with which the author dissected settled ideas of race and identity in this book.[...]

Querelle, a young sailor is at large in the port of Brest. His abrupt superior officer, Lt Seblon, records in an elegant diary his longing for the young man. The policeman, who frames his mates for stealing from the Monoprix, covets him. Mario, the brothel keeper's husband, feels entitled to possess[...]

Regarded by many critics as Jean Genet's highest achievement in the novel -- certainly one of the landmarks of postwar French literature. The story of a dangerous man seduced by peril, Querelle deals in a startling way with the Dostoyevskian theme of murder as an act of total liberation."[...]

Dominique Edde met novelist and playwright Jean Genet in the 1970s. And she never forgot him. His presence, she writes, gave me the sensation of icy fire. Like his words, his gestures were full, calculated and precise. . . . Genet s movements mimicked the movement of time, accumulating rather than p[...]

Genet's fictionalized and distant account of his rambles through France, Czechoslavakia, Germany and elsewhere in the '30s and '40s, covering his time in prison, his relationships with men such as the one-armed Stilitano, along with erotic accounts of his lovers during the period, and interspersed w[...]

Sjømannen Georges Querelle er både voldelig og kriminell. I Brest møter han broren Robert, som holder til i havnebyens horehus. I Brest befinner seg også Querelles overordnede, løytnant Seblon, den homofile offiseren som deler sine lyster med dagboka si. Da to drap finner sted i byen, lykkes Qu[...]

I Rosenmiraklet [1946] återger Jean Genet sina erfarenheter inifrån franska fängelser på tjugo-, trettio- och fyrtiotalen. Det blir mer en världsförklaring än en bekännelse. Den katolska moraliska ordning som Genet inpräntats sedan barnsben återkastas i en inverterad version, där en mörd[...]

Jean Genets oerhört inflytelserika första roman Tjuven och kärleken skrevs i fängelse 1942, på den bruna papp fången Genet förväntades göra påsar av.
Hjälten är transvestiten Divine, som introduceras med sin död och begravning. Innan hon dog av lungsot levde hon i en vindskupa med ut[...]