Albertine Book Club: Jean Genet’s Miracle of the Rose

Join bestselling author and president of the 43rd Angoulême International Comics Festival jury, Antonin Baudry, for a discussion on Jean Genet’s 1946 novel, Miracle of the Rose (Miracle de la rose).

“When I got to the street, I walked boldly. But I was always accompanied by an agonizing thought: the fear that honest people may be thieves who have chosen a cleverer and safer way of stealing.” ― Jean Genet, Miracle of the Rose

In a series of riveting anecdotes, Miracle of the Rose conveys the narrator’s experiences in Mettray Penal Colony and Fontevrault prison. With the German occupation of France in the background, a nightmarish account of prison comes to light in the text’s foreground: delinquency mingles with eroticism, and a picture of Genet’s strange and singular universe behind bars – Genet himself was once imprisoned in Mettray Penal Colony – emerges.

Miracle of the Rose is at once a miracle of the body and of the mind, confinement transformed into redemption; incarceration into poetry; and life into the path of truth. As the narrator concludes, “I am silent and walk barefoot.”

French and English versions of Miracle of the Rose are available for purchase at Albertine. The discussion is led in English and French. Speakers of English and/or French are encouraged to attend. The Albertine Book Club is free and open to the public. No RSVP necessary.

Albertine
972 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10075, USA











When: Tue., Feb. 2, 2016 at 7:00 pm

Join bestselling author and president of the 43rd Angoulême International Comics Festival jury, Antonin Baudry, for a discussion on Jean Genet’s 1946 novel, Miracle of the Rose (Miracle de la rose).

“When I got to the street, I walked boldly. But I was always accompanied by an agonizing thought: the fear that honest people may be thieves who have chosen a cleverer and safer way of stealing.” ― Jean Genet, Miracle of the Rose

In a series of riveting anecdotes, Miracle of the Rose conveys the narrator’s experiences in Mettray Penal Colony and Fontevrault prison. With the German occupation of France in the background, a nightmarish account of prison comes to light in the text’s foreground: delinquency mingles with eroticism, and a picture of Genet’s strange and singular universe behind bars – Genet himself was once imprisoned in Mettray Penal Colony – emerges.

Miracle of the Rose is at once a miracle of the body and of the mind, confinement transformed into redemption; incarceration into poetry; and life into the path of truth. As the narrator concludes, “I am silent and walk barefoot.”

French and English versions of Miracle of the Rose are available for purchase at Albertine. The discussion is led in English and French. Speakers of English and/or French are encouraged to attend. The Albertine Book Club is free and open to the public. No RSVP necessary.

Albertine
972 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10075, USA

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