Saint Genet

Actor and Martyr

2012
Author:

Jean-Paul Sartre

The remarkable and controversial study of the mind, life, and legend of Jean Genet

Saint Genet is Jean-Paul Sartre’s classic biography of Jean Genet—thief, convict, and great artist—a character of almost legendary proportions whose influence grows stronger with time. Bringing together two of the century’s greatest minds and artists, Saint Genet is at once a compelling psychological portrait, masterpiece of literary criticism, and one of Sartre’s most personal and inspired philosophical creations.

A brilliant and unorthodox book, crowded with insights that will disturb and illuminate.

The Atlantic

Saint Genet is Jean-Paul Sartre’s classic biography of Jean Genet—thief, convict, and great artist—a character of almost legendary proportions whose influence grows stronger with time. Bringing together two of the century’s greatest minds and artists, Saint Genet is at once a compelling psychological portrait, masterpiece of literary criticism, and one of Sartre’s most personal and inspired philosophical creations.

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was a renowned philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, and literary critic. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964, an honor he declined.

Bernard Frechtman was Jean Genet’s first American translator and literary agent.

A brilliant and unorthodox book, crowded with insights that will disturb and illuminate.

The Atlantic

A remarkable achievement.

New York Times

The brilliance and humanity and erudition and unsentimental compassion that have gone into this work are literally unbelievable. . . . Saint Genet is biographical exegesis carried to the point of high art.

Newsweek

Grandly conceived and passionately executed.

Harper’s

One of the most astonishing critical studies ever written about one writer by another.

TIME

Sartre’s passionately committed treatise seeks to give Genet to the world so that we may recognize ourselves in his incarnation: the outcast, the saint, the evil one, the thief, the murderer, the clown, the knight errant, the queen, the artist.

New York Times Book Review

If... a biography is an attempt to understand how an individual's life echoes certain elemental patterns growing out of key determining events, Saint Genet hits the bull's eye.

Blogcritics

After this book, you won't like what you see and you won't be able to look away. That's why people need to read Genet.

Bookslut