Downstart: The Autobiography of Brian Inglis

This biography aims to uncover the truth about one of the century's strangest and most mysterious literary rebels. Genet's early life encompassed thieving, the French Foreign Legion and homosexual prostitution. In prison in the 1940s, he began to write. Plays and novels - including Thief's Journal and Our Lady of Flowers followed. Hailed as a genius, and taken up by the fashionable literary society of post-war Paris, he later espoused the Black Panther movement in America and the Palestinian fight for a homeland. Edmund White examines the motivations behind the extremes in Genet's life and writing. Striving to separate the facts from the myths, and working from assembled letters and interviews, White creates a portrait of an extraordinary man.