Jean Genet wrote novels, plays and essays about criminals, outcasts, desire and the deliberate reversal of conventional moral values. Our Lady of the Flowers is narrated through fantasies of Parisian thieves, drag queens and murderers, while The Thief’s Journal transforms Genet’s own experiences of theft, prison and wandering into stylised autobiographical prose. The Balcony and The Maids move those concerns onto the stage through role-playing, power and ritualised performance. Genet’s writing is lyrical, transgressive and highly self-conscious, treating shame and social exclusion as material for aesthetic transformation rather than confession alone. His work is central to queer literature, French modernism, prison writing, avant-garde theatre and twentieth-century transgressive fiction. Read more Less
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