The explosive work of Genet. The book is here, in this apartment, dreadful, obscene, unpublishable, unavoidable. One does not know how to take it. It is. It will be. Will it force the world to become such that it can appear in it? For me, it signifies the great event of the era. It stirs me, it disgusts me, and it enchants me. It raises countless questions. It comes on the light feet of scandal, with its velvet feet. I have reread Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs line by line. The poem "Le Condamné à Mort" was lined up with other poems. Here, however, we have the solitude and the sparkle of a dark star before us. Jean Cocteau, diary entry from February 22, 1943. Thanks to the mediation of Jean Cocteau, the first edition of Jean Genet's debut novel was published in France in 1944. In Germany, it was released.