Genet has always shocked — and loved to shock. Born in France in 1910, he was abandoned by his mother, an unmarried woman who referred to herself as a governess. As a teenager, he was sent to reform school, where he began to identify with criminality, including what was then the criminal identity of being gay. He joined the army and served in Syria and Morocco. Later he traveled across Europe, living as a thief and a prostitute, and ended up back in jail, where he began to write. In 1943, he was about to be sent to prison for life for BOOK theft when a group of French intellectuals led by Jean Cocteau rescued him.