Miracle of the Rose

If the modern age celebrates writers by degrees of their idiosyncrasies, it's easy to see why Genet's work is so highly prized - although many seem to aspire to the condition of the 'outsider', he really is that - the real deal - a man who spent the greater part of his life incarcerated and who in the process created his own unique aesthetic and moral universe. His writing is dreamlike and sometimes difficult to follow because of its drifts and digressions - but its punctuated with such dazzling epiphanies that it rewards again and again.

The beauty of this book is that it is written in a totally modernistic way, the writer engages you from the start describing his love of the degredation and violent homosexuality he endured and learnt to love, in his time in the children's home. It is an important book because it takes the most shocking of circumstances and turns them into a beautiful love story showing the endless triumph the beauty of the willing thug that is the ' miracle of the rose.' He describes a quite beautiful book that should make most modern writers of social realism wake up and examine the patronising angle they take on societies ill's and the dispossesed. Really, really heartbreakingly good.