Translated by Damion SearlsShortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize | Winner of the 2021 Brage Prize | Winner of the 2021 Norwegian Critic’s Prize | Longlisted for the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld PrizeAsle is an ageing painter and widower who lives alone on the southwest coast of Norway. In nearby Bjørgvin another Asle, also a painter, is lying in the hospital, consumed by alcoholism. Asle and Asle are doppelgängers – two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life, both grappling with existential questions. In this final instalment of Jon Fosse’s Septology, the major prose work by ‘the Beckett of the twenty-first century’ (Le Monde), we follow the lives of the two Asles as younger adults in flashbacks: the narrator meets his lifelong love, Ales; joins the Catholic Church; and makes a living bytrying to paint away all the pictures stuck in his mind. A New Name: Septology VI-VII is a transcendent explorationof the human condition, and a radically o
‘On Beckett: Essays and Criticism’ is the first collection of writings about the Nobel Prize-winning author that covers the entire spectrum of his work, and also affords a rare glimpse of the private
“On Beckett: Essays and Criticism” is the first collection of writings about the Nobel Prize–winning author that covers the entire spectrum of his work, and also affords a rare glimpse of the private
‘Dialogues on Beckett’ is a collection of 12 conversations about 12 plays by Samuel Beckett, discussions about the meaning of life and the universe between an agnostic and a Christian, based on a clos
Bringing together seminal writings on Beckett from the 1950s and 1960s with critical readings from the 1980s and 1990s, this collection is inspired by a wide variety of literary-theoretical approaches
While providing a critical introduction for the student of Samuel Beckett's work and for other readers and theatre-goers who have been influenced by it, this study also presents an original perspective on one of the twentieth century's greatest writers of prose fiction and drama. Andrew Kennedy links Beckett's vision of a diminished humanity with his art of formally and verbally diminished resources, and traces the fundamental simplicity and coherence of Beckett's work beneath its complex textures. In the section on the plays, Dr Kennedy stresses the humour and tragicomic humanism alongside the theatrical effectiveness; and in a discussion of the fiction (the celebrated trilogy of novels) he relates the relentless diminution of 'story' to the diminishing selfhood of the narrator. An introduction outlines the personal, cultural and specifically literary contexts of Beckett's writing, while a concluding chapter offers up-to-date reflections on his œuvre, from the point-of-view of the the
Samuel Beckett's work forever changed the concepts of literature and theatre. His work remains a core part of introductory courses on literary history, drama, theatre or performance and also features
Samuel Beckett's work forever changed the concepts of literature and theatre. His work remains a core part of introductory courses on literary history, drama, theatre or performance and also features
This ground-breaking study analyzes Beckett’s television plays in relation to the history and theory of television. It argues that they are in dialogue with innovative television traditions connected
A powerful, genre-defying meditation, with Beckett at its origin, that touches on mysteries as varied as literary celebrity, baseball, and why we feel the need to be cruel to one another
This book of collected essays approaches Beckett’s work through the context of modernism, while situating it in the literary tradition at large. It builds on current debates aiming to redefine ‘modern
Confinement appears repeatedly in Samuel Beckett’s oeuvre – from the asylums central to Murphy and Watt to the images of confinement that shape plays such as Waiting for Godot and Endgame. Drawing on
In 1936, Samuel Beckett wrote a letter to the Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein expressing a desire to work in the lost tradition of silent film. The production of Beckett's Film in 1964, on the
This a comprehensive comparison of the narrative techniques of two of the twentieth century's most important writers of prose. Using a combination of theoretical analysis and close readings of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu and Beckett's trilogy of novels, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable, James H. Reid compares the two novelists' use of first-person narration in constructing and demystifying fictions of consciousness. Reid focuses on the narrator's search to represent the voice that speaks the novel, a search, he argues, that structures first-person narration in the works of both novelists. He examines in detail the significant impact of Proust's writing on Beckett's own work as well as Beckett's subtle reworkings of Proust's themes and strategies. This study is an important contribution to critical literature, and offers fresh perspectives on the crucial importance of the Recherche and the trilogy in the context of the twentieth-century novel.
