This shocking novel about the sailor and murderer Querelle is the diary of a damned soul, whom nothing can save except for the objectification of horror through language. Jean Genet articulates the most intimate and the most public aspects, the transformations of cruelty into delight and of delight into cruelty, the rites of murderers, victims, and executioners, who are identical to one another. Jean Genet, the "demonic rhetorician" (Jean-Paul Sartre), fully exposes himself in this novel; he protests against taboos - he is free.