Jean Genet

Jean Genet (born December 19, 1910 in Paris, died April 15, 1986 in Paris) was a novelist, playwright, and poet. His novels and plays, full of sexual situations, usually deal with pimps, thieves, homosexuals and other social outcasts, reflecting his own experiences as a gay prison inmate.

Having been accused of stealing at age ten, Genet decided to become an actual thief and spent his teenage years in youth prison. Later he lived as a male prostitute.

In 1943, convicted to serve a life-long sentence, he took up writing. His first novel, widely regarded as his best, Our Lady of the Flowers[?] (1944), describes a journey through the Parisian underworld.

In The Miracle of the Rose[?] (1946), he focuses on his life in prison, where he meets men again who had been his lovers in youth prison.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Cocteau, and Pablo Picasso found his work so brilliant, that eventually he was pardoned.

Later works by him include The Thief's Journal[?] (1949) and Querelle (1947), the movie version of which was the last film directed by Rainer Fassbinder.

Famous plays authored by him are The Maids[?] (1949) and The Balcony[?] (1956).