Jean Genet

Jean Genet (born Dec. 19, 1910, Paris, France—died April 15, 1986, Paris) was a French criminal and social outcast turned writer who, as a novelist, transformed erotic and often obscene subject matter into a poetic vision of the universe and, as a dramatist, became a leading figure in the avant-garde theatre, especially the Theatre of the Absurd. Genet, an illegitimate child abandoned by his mother, Gabrielle Genet, was raised by a family of peasants. Caught...