'This biography is elegant meticulous and wholly satisfying' Sunday Telegraph
This biography of Genet explores the perverse extremes of his life and writing, and separates the fact from the mythology which was fostered by Genet himself. Edmund White has interviewed lovers, friends, publishers and acquaintances, and has drawn from material, from letters (a number published here for the first time) and other original sources.
Edmund White was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1940. His fiction includes the autobiographical sequence A Boy's Own Story, The Beautiful Room is Empty and The Farewell Symphony, as well as Caracole, Forgetting Elena, Noctunes for the King of Naples, and Skinned Alive, a collection of short stories. He is also the author of a highly acclaimed biography of Jean Genet, a short study of Proust, a travel book about America - States of Desire - and of Sketches from Memory, with Hubert Sorin. He is an officer of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres.
