Saint Genet
Actor and Martyr
Jean-Paul Sartre
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
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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.
$24.95 paper ISBN 978-0-8166-7760-3
640 pages, 6 x 9, February 2012
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
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Blogcritics book review: Saint Genet
Josh Zajdman reviews SAINT GENET: ACTOR AND MARTYR by Jean-Paul Sartre for Bookslut.
Blogcritics book review: Saint Genet
Jean-Paul Sartre's SAINT GENET is "far from what would be called a biography."