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).