Part of Series
Written and published in French in 1951, and in Samuel Beckett’s English translation in 1956, Malone Dies is the second of his immediate post-war novels, written during what Beckett later referred to as ‘the siege in the room’. ‘Malone’, writes Malone, ‘is what I am called now.’ On his deathbed, whittling away the time with stories and revisions of stories, the octogenarian Malone's account of his condition is contradictory and intermittent, shifting with the vagaries of the passing days: without mellowness, without elegiacs; wittier, jauntier, and capable of darker rages than his precursor Molloy. Malone promises silence, but as a storyteller he delivers irresistibly more.
Author
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in France for most of his adult life. He wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour. Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd". His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career. Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation". In 1984 he was elected Saoi of Aosdána.
