Jean Genet

Jean Genet (1910-1986) was a French writer, poet and playwright, author notably of Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, Miracle de la rose, Journal du voleur and Les Bonnes. A singular figure in twentieth-century French literature, he built a body of work blending marginality, desire, transgression, solitude and a quest for beauty.

Born in Paris in 1910 and abandoned by his mother at a very young age, Jean Genet was placed in the care of the Assistance publique and grew up with a foster family in the Morvan. His adolescence and youth were marked by running away, wandering, theft and several spells in prison. These experiences deeply informed his early writings, in which he transformed the figures of the thief, the prisoner and the outcast into literary characters.

He began writing in the early 1940s. Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, written in prison and first published in 1943, was followed notably by Miracle de la rose, Pompes funèbres, Querelle de Brest and Journal du voleur. His work quickly attracted the attention of several major literary figures, among them Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Genet also established himself as one of the leading playwrights of the post-war period. Les Bonnes, first staged in 1947, followed by Le Balcon, Les Nègres and Les Paravents, stage relationships of domination, power, identity and the play of appearances in a deliberately provocative and ritualised theatre.

From the 1960s onward, Jean Genet published less and became increasingly engaged in the political and anti-colonial struggles of his time. His work, long considered scandalous, is today regarded as one of the most original and influential in modern French literature.