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Jean Genet (1910-1986) was born in Paris. Abandoned by his mother at seven months, he was raised in state institutions and charged with his first crime when he was ten. After spending many of his teenage years in a reformatory, Genet enrolled in the Foreign Legion, though he later deserted, turning to a life of thieving and pimping that resulted in repeated jail terms and, eventually, a sentence of life imprisonment. In prison he began to write-poems and prose that combined pornography and an open celebration of criminality with an extraordinary baroque, high literary style-and on the strength of this work found himself acclaimed by such literary luminaries as Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir, whose advocacy secured a presidential pardon for him in 1948. Between 1944 and 1948 Genet wrote four novels, Our Lady of the Flowers, Miracle of the Rose, Funeral Rites, and Querelle, and the scandalizing memoir A Thief's Journal. Throughout the 1950s he devoted himself to theater, writing the boldly experimental and increasingly political plays The Balcony, The Blacks, and The Screens. After a silence of some twenty years, Genet began his last book, Prisoner of Love, in 1983. It was completed just before he died. Jeffrey Zuckerman is an editor and translator from the French. He is the digital editor of Music & Literature and his recent translations include Ananda Devi's Eye Out of Her Ruins and Antoine Volodine's Radiant Terminus. Zuckerman's writing and translations have appeared in Best European Fiction, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Paris Review Daily, Tin House, and Vice. He lives in New York. Charlotte Mandell is a translator of French literature. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and attended the Universite de Paris III and Bard College. She lives in the Hudson valley.
Genet's multifaceted and wildly original aesthetic is embodied in associative takes and close reads . . . Also enthralling are reflections on the inner void, queer life, disease, and death . . . Essential for followers of Genet, inquisitive general readers, and enthusiasts of 20th-century avant-garde French writing. --Diane Mehta, Library Journal [This book is] united by Genet's signature probing prose and his fascination with morality, misfits, and art. . . . Throughout, Genet is a deft, sensual, and outrageous critic--in regards to theater, he proclaims, 'A performance that does not act on my soul is vain.' Fans will be pleased with this gathering of Genet's inimitable reflections on art, life, and his muses. --Publishers Weekly The title essay is a classic work from the great Genet on the institution of French education and what we should do about juvenile criminality. It's a pioneering essay, much of which is still quite relevant today. --Andres Barba, PEN America [T]his text provides crucial insights into Genet's way of thinking. --John Gray, The New Statesman These selected essays bring us once again the somewhat neglected contrarian voice of Jean Genet . . . including the title essay which is . . . a subtly-nuanced praise piece for the prison experience . . . these provocative Genet pieces are certainly worth investigating. --Paddy Kehoe, RTE Genet consistently broke lyrical conventions, creating a narrative approach as a stream of his unique consciousness, unexpectedly poetic. The collection 'The Criminal Child' examines homosexuals' connection to crime, punishment, and our own queerness. His language, provocative and queer, reminds us that Genet was his own creation. --Mark William Norby, Bay Area Reporter Genet's sense of language [moved] seamlessly from street argot to the sublime. . . . Genet's poetry drew me to write; his imagery drew Robert [Mapplethorpe] to the camera. --Patti Smith, The Paris Review Beside [Genet], Henry Miller is but a cheerfully smutty college sophomore, Sade a dilettante aristocrat of eccentric habits, Gide a genteel old lady sedately cultivating nightshade in her little kitchen garden. --Time
