The action of the novel develops within the walls of the French Central and the Metre prison, in the memories of the 16-year-old hero. Teenage delinquency, a broken psyche, prison conditions and even the conscience of juvenile criminals - all the surroundings, the background of lusts, desires and love of 15-18 year old thieves and murderers. Love, or rather, the loves that permeate all the pages of the book, are childishly ingenuous and naive, and also not chaste and bashful in an adult way. It is difficult to get rid of irony when tasting the works of Jean Genet (the author himself in no way treated them ironically !), and yet, the novel is based on real events that happened in the author’s life, and therefore cannot help but touch the soul.

Jean Genet’s novel “The Miracle of the Rose” is one of the most touching and romantic works of the French writer. Poetically transformed romanticism and cynical provocations, the thirst for pure love and passion for betrayal, authenticity and fiction, high “calm” and vulgarism endow Genet’s novels with an ineradicable exciting force, placing them on a par with the highest achievements of literature of this century.