Prisoner of Love | Hardback First Edition

Genet, Jean

ISBN 10: 033029962X / ISBN 13: 9780330299626

Published by Picador, uk, 1989

About this Item

A powerful and deeply personal work by Jean Genet, 'Prisoner of Love' stands as one of the author's final and most politically engaged texts. Written in the aftermath of his time among Palestinian fighters and his encounters with members of the Black Panther movement, the book blends memoir, reportage, and philosophical reflection into a singular literary achievement.

Genet?s prose - lyrical, provocative, and uncompromising - explores themes of revolution, identity, exile, and solidarity, offering a complex and often controversial meditation on conflict and belonging. This English-language edition, with an introduction by Edmund White, remains a key text for readers of modern French literature and political writing.

Condition: The book is in good condition overall, with a strong, square binding and clean, unmarked text pages. The paper has gently toned with age, as expected. The dust jacket is present and has been protected in a plastic cover; it shows visible surface wear, including scuffing, scratching, and some creasing, along with a small area of loss and edge wear (see images). These flaws are cosmetic and do not affect the integrity of the book, which remains an attractive and entirely serviceable copy.

Seller Inventory # 83

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Prisoner of Love | Hardback First Edition
• Publisher: Picador, uk
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 033029962X
• ISBN 13: 9780330299626
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good
• Dimensions: 160W x 240H x 40D millimeters 160 millimeters width by 240 millimeters height by 40 millimeters depth
• Weight: 720 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Hardcover with dust jacket, 1989, First Edition, 375 pages, Jean Genet Autobiography, which includes his relationships with The Palestinians and The Black Panthers.

About the Author

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 Flowers, Miracle of the Rose, Funeral Rites, and Querelle, and the scandalizing memoir A Thief’s Journal. Throughout the Fifties he devoted himself to theater, writing the boldly experimental and increasingly political plays The Balcony, The Blacks, and The Screens. After a silence of some twenty years, Genet began his last book, Prisoner of Love, in 1983. It was completed just before he died.

Ahdaf Soueif is a novelist and a writer on political and cultural affairs. Her novel, The Map of Love, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999. She was born in Egypt and lives in Cairo and London.

Barbara Bray (1924–2010) was a translator of twentieth-century French literature into English. She was an early champion of Marguerite Duras and Samuel Beckett, and also translated the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Anouilh, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. Her translations of The Bridge of Beyond by Simone Schwarz-Bart, Monsieur Proust by Céleste Albaret, and Prisoner of Love by Jean Genet are available as NYRB Classics.