num_pages: 275
description: Querelle of Brest is regarded by many critics as Jean Genet's highest achievement in the novel- certainly one of the landmarks of postwar French literature. The story of a dangerous man seduced by danger, it deals in a startling way with the Dostoevskian theme of murder as an act of total liberation, and as a pact demanding an answering sacrifice. Querelle is a young sailor at large in the port of Brest. His abrupt senior officer, Lt. Seblon, records in an elegant diary his longing for the young man. The policeman Mario, who frames his mates for stealing from the Monoprix, covets him. The brothel keeper's husband, feels entitled to possess him. The murderer in hiding, whom he nourishes, embraces him. Even the madam herself, despite her dispproval of his kind, becomes Querelle's mistress.'His elaborate constructed novel about a sailor in Brest who murders and allows representatives of authority, like policemen and ponces, to act out their sexual fantasies on him is continuously vivid and varied...To ignore it would be a kind of treason to culture one inhabits' PUNCH'In spite of the quality of the rapaciousness and lust-the corruption by both the establishment and the outsider, the characters in Genet's books all share a burning, tempestuous passion to live. For them, to do good or evil is part of the human condition-and to sin is better than to do nothing, because it means to exist. On the final count, Querelle of Brest stands for a great cry of affirmation on the side of life' THE SPECTATOR
language: English
title: Querelle of Brest
titlecomplete: Querelle of Brest (Paladin Books)
genres: Literature, Crime, Gay, Queer, LGBT, Novels, French Literature, Fiction, Classics, France
ratings_count: 2382
places: France, Brest
publisher: Paladin