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Jean Genet

Author

Bio

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 Genet 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 for him a presidential pardon in 1948. Between 1944 and 1948 Genet wrote four novels—Our Lady of the FlowersMiracle of the RoseFuneral 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 BalconyThe Blacks, and The Screens. After a silence of some twenty years, Genet began his last book, Prisoner of Love (available as an NYRB Classic), in 1983. It was completed just before he died.

Charlotte Mandell has translated nearly fifty books from the French, including works by Guy de Maupassant, Marcel Proust, Maurice Blanchot, Jonathan Littell, and Mathias Énard. She has been awarded a translation prize from the Modern Language Association and the National Translation Award in Prose. Her translation of The Magnetic Fields by André Breton and Philippe Soupault will be published by NYRB Poets in 2020. 

Jeffrey Zuckerman’s recent translations from the French include Ananda Devi’s Eve Out of Her Ruins and The Living Days, the diaries of the Dardenne brothers, and the short stories of Hervé Guibert. He is the digital editor of Music & Literature, and his writing and translations have appeared in Best European Fiction, the Los Angeles Review of BooksThe Paris Review DailyTin House, and Vice.

Jean Genet Books

Prisoner of Love book cover

Prisoner of Love

Jean Genet
The Criminal Child book cover

The Criminal Child

Jean Genet
The Maids and Deathwatch book cover

The Maids and Deathwatch

Jean Genet
The Thief's Journal book cover

The Thief's Journal

Jean Genet
The Balcony book cover

The Balcony

Jean Genet
The Screens book cover

The Screens

Jean Genet
The Blacks book cover

The Blacks

Jean Genet
Funeral Rites book cover

Funeral Rites

Jean Genet
Querelle book cover

Querelle

Jean Genet
Miracle of the Rose book cover

Miracle of the Rose

Jean Genet
Our Lady of the Flowers book cover

Our Lady of the Flowers

Jean Genet
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