This biography aims to uncover the truth about one of the century's strangest and most mysterious literary rebels. Genet's early life encompassed thieving, the French Foreign Legion and homosexual prostitution. In prison in the 1940s, he began to write. Plays and novels - including "Thief's Journal" and "Our Lady of Flowers" followed. Hailed as a genius, and taken up by the fashionable literary society of post-war Paris, he later espoused the Black Panther movement in America and the Palestinian fight for a homeland. Edmund White examines the motivations behind the extremes in Genet's life and writing. Striving to separate the facts from the myths, and working from assembled letters and interviews, White creates a portrait of an extraordinary man. Edmund White is both novelist and critic, the author of "A Boy's Own Story" and "The Beautiful Room is Empty".
- ISBN10 070113397X
- ISBN13 9780701133979
- Publish Date 17 June 1993
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 17 June 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Vintage Publishing
- Imprint Chatto & Windus
- Pages 848
- Language English