This autobiographical work has a non-linear structure: stories from Genet's adolescence are mixed in with his experiences as a thirty-year-old man at Fontevrault prison.

There is also a fantastical dimension to the narrative, particularly in Fontevrault passages concerning a prisoner called Harcamone who is condemned to death for murder.

Genet was detained in Mettray Penal Colony between 2 September 1926 and 1 March 1929, after which, at the age of 18, he joined the Foreign Legion.

William S. Burroughs used the title "The Miracle of the Rose" as a chapter in his novel "The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead".

Luc Forlivesi, Georges-François Pottier and Sophie Chassat, Educate & Punish: the agricultural penal colony of Mettray (1839-1937) (in French), Presses universitaires de Rennes, October 2005.