Querelle of Brest

(, Main)

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Description

'The man who wears the uniform of a sailor is in no way pledged or bound to obey the rules of prudence.' young sailor is at large in the port of Brest. His abrupt superior officer, Lt. Seblon, records in an elegant diary his longing for the young man. The policeman, who frames his mates for stealing from the Monoprix, covets him. Mario, the brothel keeper's husband, feels entitled to possess him. The murderer in hiding, whom he nourishes, embraces him. Even the madame herself, despite her disapproval of his kind, becomes Querelle's mistress. Only Genet - the 'poet of evil of our times' (Cyril Connolly) - could make magic out of the creature of the stinking port; and Querelle of Brest may be perhaps the most inventive, because it is the least autobiographical, of Genet's prose work.

Author Bio

Jean Genet was born in Paris in 1910. An illegitimate child who never knew his parents, he was abandoned to the Public Assistance Authorities. He was ten when he was sent to a reformatory for stealing; thereafter he spent time in the prisons of nearly every country he visited in thirty years of prowling through the European underworld. With ten convictions for theft in France to his credit he was, the eleventh time, condemned to life imprisonment. Eventually he was granted a pardon by President Auriol as a result of appeals from France's leading artists and writers led by Jean Cocteau.$$$His first novel, Our Lady of the Flowers, was written while he was in prison, followed by Miracle of the Rose, the autobiographical The Thief's Journal, Querelle of Brest and Funeral Rites. He wrote six plays: The Balcony, The Blacks, The Screens, The Maids, Deathwatch and Splendid's (the manuscript of which was rediscovered only in 1993). Jean Genet died in 1986.