The Thief's Journal Jean Genet Sartre Grove Press 1964 1st Edition 1st Print DJ

by Jean Genet

$60 · Offered by eBay

First edition

CONDITION: Very Good / Very Good. Unmarked. First Edition, First Printing. 1964. Grove Press, No. GP-326; NY. Hardcover. VG red cloth boards, gilt spine lettering, corners sharp. Binding straight, tight & square. VG dust jacket, unclipped. Light even toning, faint rubbing, minor softening at head and heel. Protected in mylar cover. 268 pp. Octavo. Genet's autobiographical account of the European criminal underworld of the 1930s, w/ a foreword by Jean-Paul Sartre drawn from his study Saint Genet. Ships in a box, quickly & w/care. SYNOPSIS: The Thief's Journal (Journal du voleur) is Jean Genet's autobiographical exploration of the European criminal underworld during the interwar years of the 1930s. Set largely within the Barrio Chino district of Barcelona alongside journeys across Spain, Italy, Poland and Nazi Germany, the narrative reconstructs the author's lived experience as a vagrant, thief and sex worker. Genet subverts conventional bourgeois morality by erecting a personal moral framework wherein betrayal, criminality and degradation are transfigured into spiritual and aesthetic devotion. Grove Press published the work in New York in 1964, translated directly from the French by Bernard Frechtman. An extensive introductory foreword by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, extracted from his 1952 biographical study Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, grounds the literary work within post-war existential philosophy. Frechtman's close translation captures the lyrical, dense syn

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 1964
• Condition: Very Good

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