20th-century absurdist beckett british classic-fiction contemporary english-literature fiction frana-a-ais french french-literature humour ireland irish irish-literature joyce literature modern-lit modernism modernist nobel nobel-laureate novel novels short-stories

Samuel Beckett, the recipient of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature and one of the greatest writers of our century, first published these ten short stories in 1934; they originally formed part of an unfinished novel. They trace the career of the first of Becketts antiheroes, Belacqua Shuah.

Belacqua is a student, a philanderer, and a failure, and Beckett portrays the various aspects of his troubled existence: he studies Dante, attempts an ill-fated courtship, witnesses grotesque incidents in the streets of Dublin, attends vapid parties, endures his marriage, and meets his accidental death. These early stories point to the qualities of precision, restraint, satire, and poetry found in Becketts mature works, and reveal the beginning stages of Becketts underlying theme of bewilderment in the face of suffering.