Jean Genet's first, and arguably greatest, novel was written while he was in prison. As Sartre recounts in his introduction, Genet penned this work on the brown paper which inmates were supposed to use to fold bags as a form of occupational therapy. The masterpiece he managed to produce under those [...]

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."[...]

"The power of George Jackson's personal story remains painfully relevant to our nation today, with its persistent racism, its hellish prisons, its unjust judicial system, and the poles of wealth and poverty that are at the root of all that. I hope the younger generation, black and white, will read "[...]

Jean Genet's seminal Our Lady Of The Flowers (1943) is generally considered to be his finest fictional work. The first draft was written while Genet was incarcerated in a French prison; when the manuscript was discovered and destroyed by officials, Genet, still a prisoner, immediately set about writ[...]

This title includes an introduction by Edmund White. This new short biography and critical work cuts directly to the essence of Genet's life, a life of extraordinary spectacle that was always profoundly entangled with his work. Stephen Barber emphasises those elements that made his life particularly[...]

Querelle landstiger i Brest, vars dimmiga hamnkvarter befolkas av sjömän, hamnarbetare, poliser och prostituerade.
Querelle, själv matros, tjuv, opiumsmugglare, prostituerad och seriemördare, begår ett mord som för honom innebär både en förbannelse och en befrielse; det utplånar honom s[...]

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 transan Divine, som introduceras med sin död och begravning. Innan hon dog av lungsot levde hon i en vindskupa med utsikt �[...]