The gutter in the sky / translated from the French of Jean Genet ; preparatory notes on an unknown sexuality / by Jean Cocteau

Jean Genet, Jean Cocteau

Written while he was in prison for burglary and published in 1944 in French, the novel and the author were championed by many contemporary writers, including Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Cocteau, who helped engineer a pardon for Genet. A wildly imaginative fantasy of the Parisian underworld, the novel tells the story of Divine, a male prostitute who consorts with thieves, pimps, murderers, and other criminals and who has many sexual adventures. Written in lyrical, dreamlike prose, the novel affirms a new moral order, one in which criminals are saints, evil is glorified, and conventional taboos are freely violated.