Showing results by author "Samuel Beckett" in All Categories

Read by Eimear McBride, an electrifying analysis of one giant of twentieth-century literature by another: Beckett on Proust. The whole of Proust's world comes out of a teacup . . . When he was only 25, Samuel Beckett published his first ever book: an electrifying dissection of Marcel Proust's...

There is now no doubt that not only is Waiting for Godot the outstanding play of the 20th century, but it is also Samuel Beckett's masterpiece. Yet it is both a popular text to be studied at school and an enigma. The scene is a country road. There is a solitary tree. It is evening. Two tramp-like figures, Vladimir and Estragon, exchange words. Pull off boots. Munch a root vegetable. Two other curious characters enter. And a boy. Time passes. It is all strange yet familiar.

Broadcaster Matthew Sweet presents a sequence of radio plays by Samuel Beckett, with star casts including Stephen Rea and Ian McKellen Samuel Beckett captured the pathos and irony of modern life like no other dramatist. In the decade following the success of Waiting for Godot (1952), he wrote...

Written initially in French, later translated by the author into English, Molloy is the first book in Dublin-born Samuel Beckett's trilogy. It was published shortly after WWII and marked a new, mature writing style, which was to dominate the remainder of his working life. Molloy is less a novel than a set of two monologues narrated by Molloy and his pursuer, Moran.

How It Is, a landmark in 20th century literature, is one of the most challenging of Samuel Beckett's early novels. He published it first in French in 1961 and then in his own translation in 1964. He explained in a letter that it was the outpouring of a "'man' lying panting in the mud and dark...

The Unnamable is the third novel in Beckett's trilogy, three remarkable prose works in which men of increasingly debilitating physical circumstances act, ponder, consider and rage against impermanence and the human condition. The Unnamable is without doubt the most uncompromising text and it is read here in startling fashion by Sean Barrett.

Malone Dies is the first person monologue of Malone, an old man lying in bed and waiting to die. The tone is fiercely ironic, highly quotable, and because of its extravagance, also very comic. It catches the reality of old age in a way that is grimly convincing, cruel as humor so often is, and memorable because of Beckett's way with words. A master dramatist, Beckett's novels can be even more effective when heard, and especially when read by such a Beckett specialist as Sean Barrett.

These four works show Samuel Beckett at his most penetrating. Both Krapp's Last Tape (1958) and Not I (1972) are among the most striking pieces written for the theatre in the 20th century. An old man sits at a table, playing back old tapes made when he was younger, mixed glimpses of past feelings. In Not I, we have just a mouth expressing memories and torment in a torrent of words.

Die beiden Freunde Mercier und Camier wollen sich gemeinsam auf eine Reise begeben. Nur mit dem nötigsten Gepäck beladen, wandern sie eines Morgens aus der Stadt. Doch statt sich stetig von ihrem Ausgangspunkt zu entfernen, kehren die beiden wieder und wieder in die Stadt zurück. So sinnlos die Reise der beiden Vagabunden auch erscheinen mag - unaufhörlich plaudernd und in teils absurde Diskussionen vertieft, vergeht die Zeit für Mercier und Camier wie im Flug.

Written in Roussillon during World War Two, while Samuel Beckett was hiding from the Gestapo, Watt was first published in 1953. Beckett acknowledged that this comic novel unlike any other 'has its place in the series' - those masterpieces running from Murphy to the Trilogy, Waiting for Godot and...

Mercier e Camier, prima opera scritta da Beckett in francese, è senz'altro il suo romanzo più divertente. È la storia di due amici che decidono di lasciare la loro città (una mai nominata ma riconoscibile Dublino). Il progetto del viaggio viene frustrato da continui intoppi, contrattempi, incontri con personaggi strani e inquietanti, perfino un omicidio, e i due, alla fine, decideranno di fare ritorno alle rispettive case senza essere andati da nessuna parte, se non al bordello cittadino.