Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Prisoner of Love

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Starting in 1970, Jean Genet—petty thief, prostitute, modernist master—spent two years in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. Always an outcast himself, Genet was drawn to this displaced people, an attraction that was to prove as complicated for him as it was enduring. Prisoner of Love, written some ten years later, when many of the men Genet had known had been killed, and he himself was dying, is a beautifully observed description of that time and those men as well as a reaffirmation of the author's commitment not only to the Palestinian revolution but to rebellion itself. For Genet's most overtly political book is also his most personal—the last step in the unrepentantly sacrilegious pilgrimage first recorded in The Thief's Journal, and a searching meditation, packed with visions, ruses, and contradictions, on such life-and-death issues as the politics of the image and the seductive and treacherous character of identity. Genet's final masterpiece is a lyrical and philosophical voyage to the bloody intersection of oppression, terror, and desire, at the heart of the contemporary world.

Language: English

Pages: 430

Format: Paperback

Publisher: NYRB Classics

Release: January 31, 2003

ISBN: 1590170288

ISBN 13: 9781590170281

Prisoner of Love

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Starting in 1970, Jean Genet—petty thief, prostitute, modernist master—spent two years in the Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. Always an outcast himself, Genet was drawn to this displaced people, an attraction that was to prove as complicated for him as it was enduring. Prisoner of Love, written some ten years later, when many of the men Genet had known had been killed, and he himself was dying, is a beautifully observed description of that time and those men as well as a reaffirmation of the author's commitment not only to the Palestinian revolution but to rebellion itself. For Genet's most overtly political book is also his most personal—the last step in the unrepentantly sacrilegious pilgrimage first recorded in The Thief's Journal, and a searching meditation, packed with visions, ruses, and contradictions, on such life-and-death issues as the politics of the image and the seductive and treacherous character of identity. Genet's final masterpiece is a lyrical and philosophical voyage to the bloody intersection of oppression, terror, and desire, at the heart of the contemporary world.

Language: English

Pages: 430

Format: Paperback

Publisher: NYRB Classics

Release: January 31, 2003

ISBN: 1590170288

ISBN 13: 9781590170281

More books from Barbara Bray

The Lover

3.8/5 ( ratings)

In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

Balthasar's Odyssey

3.8/5 ( ratings)

The Malady of Death

3.8/5 ( ratings)

Blue Eyes, Black Hair

3.6/5 ( ratings)

The War

The Ogre

4.1/5 ( ratings)

In Our Strange Gardens

3.5/5 ( ratings)

India Song

3.5/5 ( ratings)

Rate this book!

Write a review?