Jean Genet (1910 . 1986) was a prominent and controversial French
novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in
his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing.

His explicit and often deliberately provocative portrayal of homosexuality
and criminality was such that by the early 1950s his work was banned in
the United States. Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a long analysis of Genet's
existential development (from vagrant to writer) entitled Saint Genet (1952).

Our Lady of the Flowers (Notre Dame des Fleurs) is Genet's first novel (1943).
The free-flowing, poetic novel is a largely autobiographical account of a man's
journey through the Parisian underworld. The characters are drawn after their
real-life counterparts, mainly gay and living on the fringes of society.

The Balcony is Genet's best-known play, which has attracted many of
the greatest directors of the 20th century. Set in an unnamed city that is
experiencing a revolutionary uprising, most of the action takes place in an
upscale brothel that functions as a microcosm of the regime of
the establishment under threat outside.

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