Bøger af Jean Genet

Den unge franskmand Jean vagabonderer rundt i 1930’ernes Europa på jagt efter eventyr. Han ernærer sig som tyv og trækkerdreng og elsker ufølsomme, barske elskere. For ham er de som blomster, smukke og skrøbelige. Drevet af sin kærlighed til det onde rejser Jean fra land til land – ind og ud af fængsler, fra elsker til elsker. På gaden i Barcelona møder han den enarmede alfons Stilitano, som er en sjover uden lige og vidunderligt forræderisk. Det er kærlighed ved første blik. Tyvens dagbog er en poetisk og løssluppen skildring af tilværelsen som udskud i Europas underverden. Jean Genets autofiktive roman om begær og forbrydelse betragtes som et hovedværk i det 20. århundredes franske litteratur. Jean Genet (1910-1986) var kendt og berygtet for sine autofiktive romaner om homoseksualitet, vold og erotik. Tyvens dagbog udkom i 1949 og skildrer Genets unge år på Europas landeveje. ”En af de stærkeste og mest vitale livsfortællinger, der nogensinde er skrevet” – The New York Post

Patti Smith has written a new introduction for The Thief's Journal, Jean Genet's most autobiographical novel-which follows the years he spent as a vagrant and petty criminal-hailed by Jean-Paul Sartre as Genet's "most beautiful book"

Jean Genet er mest kendt som forfatteren der i 1940’erne skrev en række skandaløse romaner, som hyldede forbrydelsen, forræderiet og homoseksualiteten. Efter at have opgivet romankunsten fornyede han i 1950’erne teaterkunsten med sine skuespil. Men ved siden af disse i dag klassiske romaner og skuespil udgav Genet, fra 1949 og frem til sin død, en række banebrydende essays og artikler om kunst og politik. Det kriminelle barn samler et bredt udvalg af disse tekster. De handler om vidt forskellige emner: børnefængsler, linedanserkunst, Rembrandt, teaterets arkitektur, Black Panther Party, palæstinensernes modstandskamp, Rote Armee Fraktion, katedralen i Chartres, flygtningelejre m.m. Foruden deres indiskutable relevans i dag, er det også tekster som viser Genets stilistiske bredde. De bevæger sig i grænselandet mellem poesi og aktivisme: Her findes alt fra meditationer over kunstnerisk skabelse til sproglige eksperimenter, alt fra kritisk refleksion til politisk agitation og rystende vidnesbyrd. Jean Genet (1910-1986) var en fransk romanforfatter, dramatiker og essayist. Fra 1968 og frem involverede han sig aktivistisk i nogle af periodens vigtigste politiske spørgsmål.

Jean Genets sene hovedværk, En forelsket fange, er en feberdrøm af en bog; en mangfoldig, fragmenteret fortælling om solidaritet, begær, erindring og væbnet kamp, skrevet bl.a. med udgangspunkt i Genets ophold hos Black Panthers i USA i foråret 1970 og hos de palæstinensiske oprørsstyrker, feddayinerne, i perioden 1970-1972. Det kalejdoskopiske, prosalyriske testamente, der blev udgivet kort efter forfatterens død i 1986, består ikke bare af minder, anekdoter og drømmebilleder, skrevet i Genets karakteristiske, bestyrtende smukke prosa; En forelsket fange er også den lovløse forfattervagabonds sidste, radikale refleksioner over skrift og modstand, retfærdighed og vold, revolutionens skuespil, og hvad det vil sige at have et hjem. Jean Genet (1910-1986) var en af det 20. århundredes største franske forfattere og dramatikere. Hans værk er for tiden genstand for fornyet interesse både i Skandinavien og internationalt. På dansk er senest udkommet en genoversættelse af Tyvens dagbog fra 1949 (Gyldendal 2017) og Det kriminelle barn (OVO Press, 2021), et udvalg af Genets essays om kunst og politik fra 1950-1985.

This posthumous work brings together texts that bear witness to the many political causes and groups with which Genet felt an affinity, including May '68 and the treatment of immigrants in France, but especially the Black Panthers and the Palestinians. Genet speaks for a politics of protest, with an uncompromising outrage that, today, might seem on the verge of being forgotten.

Querelle, a young sailor at large in the port of Brest, is an object of illicit desire to his diary-keeping superior officer Lieutenant Seblon. He is coveted, too, by corrupt policeman Mario. He gives himself freely both to brothel-keeper Madame Lysiane and to her husband. But Querelle is a thief and a murderer - not a man to be trusted.

Composed in 1943 while the author was incarcerated in La Sante prison, this title features Harcamone, whom the author first encountered at Mettray and who resurfaces, unsurprisingly, in the adult prison of Fontevrault - now a murderer, and, in the world-turned-upside-down of the author's vision, a quasi-divine figure.

The Maids (Les Bonnes, here translated by Bernard Frechtman) is Jean Genet's most oft-revived work for the stage. Genet's maids - Solange and Claire - occupy themselves, whenever their Madame is out of doors, by acting out ritualised fantasies of revenging their downtrodden status.

Deathwatch, Jean Genet's earliest, shortest and most formally straightforward play, was first performed in Paris in 1949. It retains an intense power and makes an excellent introduction to his later dramas - The Maids, The Balcony, The Blacks, The Screens.

This novel is set in Paris in 1944 when the withdrawal of the occupying forces plunged the city into moral and physical chaos. Genet's other works include "Miracle of the Rose", "Querelle of Brest", "Our Lady of the Flowers" and "The Thief's Journal".

The Criminal Child offers the first English translation of a key early work by Jean Genet. In 1949, in the midst of a national debate about improving the French reform-school system, a French radio station commissioned Genet to write about his experience as a juvenile delinquent. He sent back a piece about his youth that was a paean to prison instead of the expected horrifying exposé. Revisiting the cruel hazing rituals that had accompanied his incarceration, relishing the special argot spoken behind bars, Genet wondered if regulating that strange other world wouldn’t simply prevent future children from discovering their essentially criminal nature in the way that he had. The radio station chose not broadcast Genet’s views.   “The Criminal Child” appears here with a selection of Genet’s finest essays, including his celebrated piece on the art of Alberto Giacometti.

Excerpts from the novels, plays, and poems of the French convict, prostitute, and literary artist join notes from his film, The Penal Colony, letters, essays, and a rare interview, all edited by a contemporary biographer.

Starting in 1970, Jean Genet—petty thief, prostitute, modernist master—spent two years in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. Always an outcast himself, Genet was drawn to this displaced people, an attraction that was to prove as complicated for him as it was enduring. Prisoner of Love, written some ten years later, when many of the men Genet had known had been killed, and he himself was dying, is a beautifully observed description of that time and those men as well as a reaffirmation of the author's commitment not only to the Palestinian revolution but to rebellion itself. For Genet's most overtly political book is also his most personal—the last step in the unrepentantly sacrilegious pilgrimage first recorded in The Thief's Journal, and a searching meditation, packed with visions, ruses, and contradictions, on such life-and-death issues as the politics of the image and the seductive and treacherous character of identity. Genet's final masterpiece is a lyrical and philosophical voyage to the bloody intersection of oppression, terror, and desire at the heart of the contemporary world.