The Unnamable – so named because he knows not who he may be – is from a nameless place. He speaks of previous selves (‘all these Murphys, Molloys, and Malones…’) as diversions from the need to stop speaking altogether. But, as with the other novels in the trilogy, the prose is full of marvellous precisions, full of its own reasons for keeping going. …perhaps the words have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.

Samuel Beckett is the greatest Irish novelist of the later twentieth century, and this trilogy of novels is his masterpiece -which makes it perhaps the outstanding literary work of our time. Because Beckett has a reputation for being difficult, even obscure, readers of the trilogy are bound to be struck not only by the verbal brilliance and inventiveness of the three novels, but also by their extraordinary humour which ranges from wit to broad comedy and even farce in a recognizably Irish way. Each story records an episode of human endurance in the face of metaphysical adversity with compassion and wisdom and each is a compelling narrative in itself in the great tradition of European fiction from Flaubert to Joyce.

'They didn't seem to take much interest in my private parts which to tell the truth were nothing to write home about, I didn't take much interest in them myself.' From the master of the absurd, these two stories of an unnamed vagrant contending with decay and death combine bleakness with the blackest of humour. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. Well, thought Belacqua, it's a quick death, God help us all. It is not. 'Dante and the Lobster' is the first of the linked short stories in Samuel Beckett's first book, More Pricks Than Kicks. Published in 1934, its style was recognisably indebted to that of his mentor, James Joyce, and crammed with linguistic texture and allusion that Beckett later shed. The book baffled many critics and sold so few copies that several batches were pulped. Decades later, this story was hailed as the Nobel Prize-winner's earliest important work. Bringing together past, present and future in our ninetieth year, Faber Stories is a celebratory compendium of collectable work.

From one of Spain's greatest writers, a witty, moving novel about art, life, death and James Joyce. SHORTLISTED FOR THE INDEPENDENT FOREIGN FICTION PRIZE 'A writer who has no equal in the contemporary landscape of the Spanish novel.' Roberto Bolano Samuel Riba is about to turn 60. A successful publisher in Barcelona, he is increasingly prone to attacks of anxiety and, looking for distraction, he concocts a spur-of-the-moment trip to Dublin, a city he has never visited but once dreamed about. He sets off for Dublin on the pretext of honouring James Joyce's Ulysses on Bloomsday. But as he and his friends gather in the cemetery to give their orations, a mysterious figure in a mackintosh resembling Joyce's protege Samuel Beckett hovers in the background. Is it Beckett, or is it the writer of genius that Riba has spent his whole career trying, and failing, to find?

Murphy, Samuel Becketts first novel, was published in 1938. Its work-shy eponymous hero, adrift in London, realises that desire can never be satisfied and withdraws from life, in search of stupor. Murphys lovestruck fiancee Celia tries with tragic pathos to draw him back, but her attempts are doomed to failure. Murphys friends and familiars are simulacra of Murphy, fragmented and incomplete. But Becketts achievement lies in the brilliantly original language used to communicate this vision of isolation and misunderstanding. The combination of particularity and absurdity gives Murphys world its painful definition, but the sheer comic energy of Becketts prose releases characters and readers alike into exuberance.

Murphy, Samuel Becketts first novel, was published in 1938. Its work-shy eponymous hero, adrift in London, realises that desire can never be satisfied and withdraws from life, in search of stupor. Murphys lovestruck fiancee Celia tries with tragic pathos to draw him back, but her attempts are doomed to failure. Murphys friends and familiars are simulacra of Murphy, fragmented and incomplete. But Becketts achievement lies in the brilliantly original language used to communicate this vision of isolation and misunderstanding. The combination of particularity and absurdity gives Murphys world its painful definition, but the sheer comic energy of Becketts prose releases characters and readers alike into exuberance.

Originally written in French and translated into English by Beckett, Endgame was given its first London performance at the Royal Court Theatre in 1957. Hamm: Clov! Clov: Yes. Hamm: Nature has forgotten us. Clov: There's no more nature. Hamm: No more nature! You exaggerate. Clov: In the vicinity. Hamm: But we breathe, we change! We lose our hair our teeth! Our bloom! Our ideals! Clov: Then she hasn't forgotten us.

Murphy, Samuel Beckett’s first novel, was published in 1938. Its work-shy eponymous hero, adrift in London, realises that desire can never be satisfied and withdraws from life, in search of stupor. Murphy’s lovestruck fiancee Celia tries with tragic pathos to draw him back, but her attempts are doomed to failure. Murphy’s friends and familiars are simulacra of Murphy, fragmented and incomplete. But Beckett’s achievement lies in the brilliantly original language used to communicate this vision of isolation and misunderstanding. The combination of particularity and absurdity gives Murphy’s world its painful definition, but the sheer comic energy of Beckett’s prose releases characters and readers alike into exuberance.

Increasingly Samuel Beckett’s writing is seen as the culmination of the great literature of the twentieth century – succeeding the work of Proust, Joyce and Kafka. Beckett is a writer whose relevance to his time and use of poetic imagery can be compared to Shakespeare’s in the late Renaissance. John Calder has examined the work of Beckett principally for what it has to say about our time in terms of philosophy, theology and ethics, and he points to aspects of his subject’s thinking that others have ignored or preferred not to see. Samuel Beckett’s acute mind pulled apart with courage and much humour the basic assumptions and beliefs by which most people live. His satire can be biting and his wit devastating. He found no escape from human tragedy in the comforts we build to shield ourselves from reality – even in art, which for most intellectuals has replaced religion. However, he did develop a moral message – one which is in direct contradiction to the values of ambition, success, acquisition and security which is normally held up for admiration, and he looks at the greed, God-worship, and cruelty to others which we increasingly take for granted, in a way that is both unconventional and revolutionary. If this study shocks many readers it is because the honesty, the integrity and the depth of Beckett’s thinking – expressed through his novels, plays and poetry, but also through his other writings and correspondence – is itself shocking, to conventional thinking. Yet what he has to say is also comforting. He offers a different ethic and prescription for living – a message based on stoic courage, compassion and an ability to understand and forgive.

Like all the greatest writers, Samuel Beckett was primarily interested in discovering the meaning and purpose of life and of the world into which we are born. Knowledgeable about the religion his family and education instilled in him, which as an adult he could neither accept nor reject, he used it extensively in his novels, plays and poetry. Beckett’s works also explored philosophy and the imaginative world of Dante and Milton, as well as the theories of Darwin and scientific speculation, in order to create a literature that investigates human destiny more deeply and originally than any other writer had done before. In this, his second book about the essence and depth of Samuel Beckett’s thinking and literary art, John Calder analyses the dualism of Beckett’s theological writing, his debt to the Gnostics, Manichaeism and Geulincx in particular, the presence of ghosts in his work, and why his late writing has received so little attention compared to the early and middle periods. It will open up the much underestimated Beckett to deeper understanding and provide enjoyment to the many who have become convinced that this once derided author is one of the major literary figures of his time.

Malone, writes Malone, is what I am called now. On his deathbed, and wiling away the time with stories, the octogenarian Malones account of his condition is intermittent and contradictory, shifting with the vagaries of the passing days: without mellowness, without elegiacs; wittier, jauntier, and capable of wilder rages than Molloy. The sound I liked best had nothing noble about it. It was the barking of the dogs, at night, in the clusters of hovels up in the hills, where the stone-cutters lived, like generations of stone-cutters before them. it came down to me where I lay, in the house in the plain, wild and soft, at the limit of earshot, soon weary. The dogs of the valley replied with their gross bay all fangs and jaws and foam...

Malone, writes Malone, is what I am called now. On his deathbed, and wiling away the time with stories, the octogenarian Malones account of his condition is intermittent and contradictory, shifting with the vagaries of the passing days: without mellowness, without elegiacs; wittier, jauntier, and capable of wilder rages than Molloy. The sound I liked best had nothing noble about it. It was the barking of the dogs, at night, in the clusters of hovels up in the hills, where the stone-cutters lived, like generations of stone-cutters before them. it came down to me where I lay, in the house in the plain, wild and soft, at the limit of earshot, soon weary. The dogs of the valley replied with their gross bay all fangs and jaws and foam...

'Malone', writes Malone, 'is what I am called now.' On his deathbed, and wiling away the time with stories, the octogenarian Malone's account of his condition is intermittent and contradictory, shifting with the vagaries of the passing days: without mellowness, without elegiacs; wittier, jauntier, and capable of wilder rages than Molloy. The sound I liked best had nothing noble about it. It was the barking of the dogs, at night, in the clusters of hovels up in the hills, where the stone-cutters lived, like generations of stone-cutters before them. it came down to me where I lay, in the house in the plain, wild and soft, at the limit of earshot, soon weary. The dogs of the valley replied with their gross bay all fangs and jaws and foam…

These four stories or ‘nouvelles’ date from 1945, though all were published much later, in French and subsequently in English. All make use of a first-person narrator, and relish its vagaries – the inability to remember facts, the uncertainty as to why he is speaking in the first place, the loss of heart when explanations seem called for… Above all, the stories crisply plot the narrator’s plotless descent into vagrancy, the steeper as it approaches The End. Out of these short works and their patient procedures grew the large canvases of Molloy and Malone Dies. My bench was still there. It was shaped to fit the curves of the seated body. It stood beside a watering trough, gift of a Mrs Maxwell to the city horses, according to the inscription. During the short time I rested there, several horses took advantage of the monument. The iron shoes approached and the jingle of the harness. Then silence. That was the horse looking at me. Then the noise of pebbles and mud that horses make when drinking. Then the silence again. That was the horse looking at me again. Then the pebbles again. Then the silence again. Till the horse had finished drinking or the driver deemed it had drunk its fill. Edited by Christopher Ricks.

Vous me demandez mes idйes sur En attendant Godot, dont vous me faites l'honneur de donner des extraits au Club d'essai, et en mкme temps mes idйes sur le thйвtre. Je n'ai pas d'idйes sur le thйвtre. Je n'y connais rien. Je n'y vais pas. C'est admissible. Ce qui l'est sans doute moins, c'est d'abord, dans ces conditions, d'йcrire une piиce, et ensuite, l'ayant fait, de ne pas avoir d'idйes sur elle non plus. C'est malheureusement mon cas.Il n'est pas donnй а tous de pouvoir passer du monde qui s'ouvre sous la page а celui des profits et pertes, et retour, imperturbable, comme entre le turbin et le Cafй du Commerce. Je ne sais pas plus sur cette piиce que celui qui arrive а la lire avec attention. Je ne sais pas dans quel esprit je l'ai йcrite. Je ne sais pas plus sur les personnages que ce qu'ils disent, ce qu'ils font et ce qui leur arrive. De leur aspect j'ai dы indiquer le peu que j'ai pu entrevoir. Les chapeaux melon par exemple. Je ne sais pas qui est Godot. Je ne sais mкme pas, surtout pas, s'il existe. Et je ne sais pas s'ils y croient ou non, les deux qui l'attendent. Les deux autres qui passent vers la fin de chacun des deux actes, зa doit кtre pour rompre la monotonie. Tout ce que j'ai pu savoir, je l'ai montrй. Ce n'est pas beaucoup. Mais зa me suffit, et largement. Je dirai mкme que je me serais contentй de moins. Quant а vouloir trouver а tout cela un sens plus large et plus йlevй, а emporter aprиs le spectacle, avec le programme et les esquimaux, je suis incapable d'en voir l'intйrкt. Mais ce doit кtre possible. Je n'y suis plus et je n'y serai plus jamais. Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo, Lucky, leur temps et leur espace, je n'ai pu les connaоtre un peu que trиs loin du besoin de comprendre. Ils vous doivent des comptes peut-кtre. Qu'ils se dйbrouillent. Sans moi. Eux et moi nous sommes quittes. Samuel Beckett, Lettre а Michel Polac, janvier 1952.