Samuel Beckett – Ireland

Irish novelist and playwright, regarded as a postmodernist. En attendant godot brought Beckett international fame and established him as one of the leading names of the theater of the absurd.

His plays are concerned with human suffering and survival, and his characters are struggling with meaninglessness and the world of the Nothing. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. In his writings for the theater Beckett showed influence of burlesque, vaudeville, the music hall, commedia dell'arte, and the silent-film style of such figures as Keaton and Chaplin. Most of his work were written in French and subsequently translated into English with substantial changes. Beckett said that when he wrote in French it was easier to write "without style" - he did not try to be elegant. With the change of language Beckett escaped from everything with which he was familiar. These books reflected Beckett's bitter realization that there is no escape from illusions and from the Cartesian compulsion to think, to try to solve insoluble mysteries. Beckett was obsessed by a desire to create what he called "a literature of the unword." He waged a lifelong war on words, trying to yield the silence that underlines them.

Known Literary Works

·         Waiting for Godot

·         Happy Days

·         More Pricks Than Kicks

·         Oh Les Beaux Jours

·         Krapp's Last Tape