During the last eighteen years of his life (1968-86), Jean Genet was preoccupied with the struggles of the disenfranchised and displaced: among them, the Black Panthers, the Baader-Meinhof, and the Palestinians. Hadrien Laroche's book is a careful philosophical and historical reading (though fascinating as a political thriller) of the acts and thoughts of various international political movements in the seventies and the eighties, and of Genet's own experiences and writings. It describes the adventures of a writer engaged with the "real world," as opposed to what Genet called "the grammatical world."

This translation of Le dernier Genet (Seuil) considers Genet's insights, failures, and critique of humanism, and examines the way in which his energetic prose forged a new political, aesthetic, and philosophical relation between literature and the world.

The original edition was nominated for France's prestigious Prix Femina as best essay, and the book has been praised by Elisabeth Roudinesco, Bernard-Henri Levy, Albert Dichy, and others.

2010 is the centenary of Jean Genet's birth.