The Thief's Journal (Journal du voleur, published in 1949) is a novel by Jean Genet. Although autobiographical to some degree, Genet's exploitation of poetic language results in an ambiguity throughout the text. Superficially, the novel follows the author's progress though 1930s Europe, wearing little and enduring hunger, contempt, and fatigue: "the life of the vermin". The protagonist is "hot for crime"
Genet enlisted in the French army in March 1929 and was dispatched to Syria. He left the army in 1936 and started living as a burglar and vagabond. While imprisoned in 1940, he started working on the novel Our Lady of the Flowers. Upon his detention in 1943 at a camp that served as a notorious deportation hub for Nazi concentration camps, almost forty prominent writers and artists persuaded him of his amazing penmanship and made a stand for him. After being set free in March 1944, he never went back to jail. The president of France pardoned Genet in 1949 for his crime of leaving the military. The French Ministry of Culture awarded him the National Grand Prize for Literature in 1983.