Jean Genet
French novelist, playwright, poet and political activist (1910-1986) · France · Writers · Died at 75
Jean Genet is read about 941 times a day, in 54 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 16 September 2026
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Something wrong?A novelist and playwright who turned a criminal youth into raw material for fiction that violated every polite boundary - sex, theft, betrayal - and made literature from the underworld.
A life in dates
Also in Deutsch
Photos 8
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In their own words 10
, This violence is a calm that disturbs you.
But I would adore that thief who is my mother.
If the hero join combat with night and conquer it, may shreds of it remain upon him!
Awards
About this person
Jean Genet was born 19 December 1910 and spent his early years as a vagabond and petty criminal, drifting through Europe's margins. That life became the basis for his writing: novels like *Our Lady of the Flowers* and *The Thief's Journal* pulled from his own experience of prisons, hustling, and outcasts. He moved into theatre with plays including *The Maids*, *The Balcony*, and *The Screens*, works that broke open questions of power, ritual, and identity. By the time of his death on 15 April 1986, he'd become a major figure in French letters and a voice for the dispossessed.
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