Jean Genet in conversation with Antoine Bourseiller, summer 1981.

“I don’t why I shouldn’t talk about myself. I’m the person who knows the most about myself. Right?”

And so we are led to believe, as novelist and playwright Jean Genet begins this revealing interview, before going on to describe his attraction to darkness, “even to the point of going to jail.” He may have stolen to eat, but something intuitively drew the young Genet towards the darkness of prison.

Over the course of the interview, Genet explains how this attraction shaped him, and his imprisonment at the Mettray Penal Colony at the age of fifteen, was instrumental in making him a writer.

This is gold for those with an interest in Jean Genet, his life and writing.

Recorded in French, with English subtitles available under the “CC” Closed Caption icon.