Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), one of the leading literary and dramatic figures of the twentieth century, was born in Foxrock, Ireland and attended Trinity College in Dublin. In 1969, Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and commended for having transformed the destitution of man into his exaltation.
Beckett has compressed his spare style to neutron star density. His words cluster together like crystal formations, cemented into patterns of rhythm and alliteration. . . . The most intense statement yet of its author's vision, this work focuses to a pinpoint one of the great sensibilities in modern world literature. --Washington Post This is the most wonderful prose I have ever read by him--sleek, ironic, gloom-cadenced, self-dissolving--and perhaps the most wonderful prose I have ever read. --Los Angeles Times