Jean Genet’s novel, The Thief’s Journal, is a work of autofiction, paralleling the author’s own life in many ways while retaining its fictional autonomy. Told in the first person, from the perspective of the author himself, The Thief’s Journal recounts Genet’s life as a vagabond and petty criminal, tracing his travels throughout Europe from country to country and from prison to prison. Along the way, the narrator—a thinly fictionalized version of Genet—recounts his many love affairs and obsessions with men and conveys to readers his complex aesthetic and moral philosophy. Throughout, Genet’s style is lyrical and coy, daring readers to be scandalized by his beautiful and even erotic treatment of criminality and vulgarity.

The novel is relatively sparse in its depiction of action and events but detailed in its depiction of the narrator’s internal life. It is a novel driven by ideas and thus organized in only a loosely chronological fashion, with many flashbacks set off in italics. The plot mainly revolves around the narrator’s love affairs and is divided into four main sections.

In the first section, the narrator begins with a description of a convict’s pink-and-white dress code and ruminates poetically on the life of crime. He introduces the reader to some of the ideas that occupy him, particularly the relationship between criminality and beauty—and between criminality and eroticism.

The second section takes place between the years 1932 and 1940. The narrator recounts his love for several criminals, notably Stilitano, Salvador, Java, and Armand. He tells, too, of his illegal travels across European borders and his time in prison. Throughout, he continues to develop his moral and aesthetic philosophy. The narrator is preoccupied by his concern for capturing his experiences in and through writing. Often his poetic memory latches onto specific objects. He recalls the jar of Vaseline discovered on his person during a prison police search, a jar which means nothing to the police but which, in the narrator’s mind, stands for the small redemption he finds in his love affairs. He laughs as he remembers the drawings of old book bindings that the police find in his possession but do not understand; the narrator made these drawings as an excuse to go to a nearby museum and steal old books. He describes with relish Stilitano’s white, foamy spittle, which has an uncanny beauty and power over people.

Though Genet uses lyrical language throughout this second section—and though he often describes prison as a place where he can find fellowship and identity—he also depicts many of his humiliations. When he dresses in drag during the time of the Carnival, he is laughed at and someone accidentally steps on his skirt. He has to clean out the police officers’ toilets in prison, embarrassing himself in front of his then-lover Michaelis. He is forced by Stilitano to deliver a package by crossing illegally from Holland into Antwerp, returning disheveled and spent. During that time, his obsession with Stilitano only grows. The chapter concludes as the narrator becomes jealous of Stilitano’s close rapport with a young man named Robert. The narrator is jealous to the point that he wishes to murder Stilitano.

In this second section the narrator also weaves in details of his childhood for readers to piece together. Born in Paris on December 19, 1910, on the Rue d’Assas, the narrator is abandoned at birth by his mother, Gabrielle Genet. He becomes a ward of the Assistance Publique, and is then brought up in Le Morvan by a peasant family. As a result of a series of misdemeanors, he is sent to Mettray Reformatory, a penal...