The Thief's Journal - Softcover

Jean Genet

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571250335 ISBN 13: 9780571250332

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2009

Synopsis

Part-autobiography, part-fiction - 'a Genet with a Genet stuffing, like the prunes of Tours', as Sartre put it - The Thief's Journal is an account of Genet's impoverished travels across Europe in the 1930s. Encompassing vagrancy, petty theft, and prostitution, the book transforms such degradations into the gilded rites of an inverted moral code, with Genet its most devout adherent. Betrayal becomes worship; delinquency, heroism. The skeleton of the work is a series of gay encounters between the 'hero' and a succession of shady figures - the con artist, the pimp, the detective even - from the European demi-monde. Appropriating the language of the Church, Genet creates a homily to a trinity of his own making - homosexuality, theft and deception. First published in 1949, The Thief's Journal is justly regarded as a masterpiece of existentialist prose, and is a milestone in the history of gay literature.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Writing in the intensely lyrical prose style that is his trademark, the man Jean Cocteau dubbed France's 'Black Prince of Letters' her reconstructs his early adult years- time he spent as a petty criminal and vagabond, traveling through Spain and Antwerp, occasionally border hopping across the rest of Europe, always one step ahead of the authorities.

About the Author

Jean Genet was born in Paris in 1910. An illegitimate child who never knew his parents, he was abandoned to the Public Assistance Authorities. He was ten when he was sent to a reformatory for stealing; thereafter he spent time in the prisons of nearly every country he visited in thirty years of prowling through the European underworld. With ten convictions for theft in France to his credit he was, the eleventh time, condemned to life imprisonment. Eventually he was granted a pardon by President Auriol as a result of appeals from France's leading artists and writers led by Jean Cocteau.$$$His first novel, Our Lady of the Flowers, was written while he was in prison, followed by Miracle of the Rose, the autobiographical The Thief's Journal, Querelle of Brest and Funeral Rites. He wrote six plays: The Balcony, The Blacks, The Screens, The Maids, Deathwatch and Splendid's (the manuscript of which was rediscovered only in 1993). Jean Genet died in 1986.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0571250335
• ISBN 13: 9780571250332
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240