The Last Genet: A Writer in Revolt

by Hadrien Laroche, David Homel (Translator)

"A beautiful book, painting the dark side of Jean Genet: those moments that are the most fascinating about a writer."—Bernard-Henri Levy, Le Point

During the last eighteen years of his life (1968–86), Jean Genet was preoccupied with the struggles of the disenfranchised and displaced: among them the Black Panthers, the Baader-Meinhof, and the Palestinians. Hadrien Laroche's book is a careful philosophical and historical reading of acts and thoughts of various political movements in the seventies and the eighties all over the world, and of Genet's experiences and writings. It describes the adventures of a writer engaged with the "real world" as opposed to the world of letters or, as he called it, "the grammatical world."

This translation of Le Dernier Genet (Seuil) considers Genet's insights, failures, and critique of humanism, and examines the way in which his energetic prose forged a new political, aesthetic, and philosophical relation between literature and the world. This is also the first book to address the issues of Genet's relation to Israel, Jews, and anti-Semitism.

The Last Genet focuses on a critical moment in history, but also on questions of borders, language, and identity, offering an alternative to Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of engagement. As such, it will be critically relevant to readers interested in the questions surrounding ethical and political writing today.

Hadrien Laroche was born in Paris; he has written three French-language novels and completed his doctorate under Jacques Derrida, who considered him "one of the most talented and original thinkers of his generation."

Genres: Queer

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Hadrien Laroche is a former student of the Ecole normale supérieure. He was visiting professor at Dartmouth College (1985- 1986) and a fellow of the School of Criticism and Theory. There he met Jacques Derrida and Patricia Williams. He completed his doctorate in philosophy under Derrida in 1996 at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS); Derrida considered Laroche, his last doctoral student, as “one of the most talented and original thinkers of his generation.”

He has published essays on Jean Genet, Paul Cézanne, Marcel Duchamp (“La machine à signatures,” Inculte #18, 2009) and three French-language novels—Les Orphelins (Paris: Allia/J’ai Lu, 2005), Les Heretiques (Paris: Flammarion, 2006) and La Restitution (Paris: Flammarion, 2009) —which have placed him at the forefront of contemporary French writing