The Balcony (Le Balcon): A Play in Nine Scenes

Jean Genet

ISBN 10: 0802150349 / ISBN 13: 9780802150349

Published by Grove Press, 1994

About this Item

The Balcony is probably the most stunning subversive work of literature to be created since the writings of the famous Marquis. A major dramatic achievement. -- Robert Brustein, The New Republic.

Seller Inventory # CIN0802150349G

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Balcony (Le Balcon): A Play in Nine Scenes
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication Date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802150349
• ISBN 13: 9780802150349
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

Book jacket/back: The setting of Jean Genet's celebrated play is a brothel that caters to refined sensibilities and peculiar tastes. Here men from all walks of life don the garb of their fantasies and act them out: a man from the gas company wears the robe and mitre of a bishop; another customer becomes a flagellant judge, and still another a victorious general, while a bank clerk defiles the Virgin mary. These costumed diversions take place while outside a revolution rages which has isolated the brothel from the rest of the rebel-controlled city. In a stunning series of macabre, climactic scenes, Genet presents his caustic view of man and society.

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.