GENET, Jean.

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Journal du voleur. First trade edition, warmly inscribed by the author on the half-title, "à Jean Dutourd et à sa femme, mes amitiés sincères. Toute ma gentille sympathie á fort de gentillesse. Mais c'est votre fillette qui est encore la plus adorable, Jean Genet" ("to Jean Dutourd and his wife, my sincere friendship. All my kind sympathy to so much kindness. But it's your little girl who is still the most adorable, Jean Genet").This recipient was the novelist and member of the Académie française Jean Dutourd (1920-2011), his wife Camille, and their daughter Clara, who was three years old at the time of publication. As a critic, Dutourd had largely respected Genet as a writer with "a deep mind, an original poetic gift, [and] complete intrepidity in his writings" (quoted in Jablonka, our translation). However, he was affronted by Genet's final play, The Screens (1961), and wrote a particularly scathing review for France Soir. Comprising 17 individual scenes, The Screens depicts an Arab insurrection against a buffoonish colonial power: a thinly veiled satire on French colonial power that references both the French conquest of Algeria in the 1840s and the then-ongoing Algerian War (1954-1962).An abridged version of The Screens premiered in Berlin in May 1961 and it was first performed in its entirety in Stockholm in 1964. Its French premier wasn't until April 1966, when it debuted at the Odéon theatre under the direction of Roger Blin. Dutourd joined a sea of critical animosity,

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