Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett
Beckett in 1977
Born	Samuel Barclay Beckett (1906-04-13)13 April 1906 Foxrock, Dublin, Ireland
Died	22 December 1989(1989-12-22) (aged 83) Paris, France
Resting place	Cimetière du Montparnasse
Occupation	Novelist playwright
Language	English French
Education	Portora Royal School Trinity College Dublin
Notable works	Murphy Watt Molloy Malone Dies The Unnamable Waiting for Godot Endgame Krapp's Last Tape How It Is Happy Days
Notable awards	Croix de Guerre (1945) Prix International (1961) Nobel Prize in Literature (1969)
Spouse	Suzanne Dechevaux-Dumesnil ​ ​ (m. 1961; died 1989)​
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Samuel Barclay Beckett (/ˈbɛkɪt/ ^ⓘ; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense. His work became increasingly minimalist as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of stream of consciousness repetition and self-reference. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd.^[1]

A resident of Paris for most of his adult life, Beckett wrote in both French and English. During the Second World War, Beckett was a member of the French Resistance group Gloria SMH (Réseau Gloria) and was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1949.^[2] He received 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".^[3] In 1961 he shared the inaugural Prix International with Jorge Luis Borges. He was the first person to be elected Saoi of Aosdána in 1984.