BECKETT, Samuel. Molloy. Paris: The Olympia Press. 1955.
8vo. Original black, blue and green printed wrapper, black lettering to front cover, over stiff white covers, encased in beige dust wrapper; pp. [7], 8-241, [5]; foot of p. 241 and rear free endpaper with 1.2 x 13 cm sections neatly trimmed away, light spotting to top edge of text-block, otherwise near fine.
First English edition, translated with Patrick Bowles.
Molloy is the first of three novels written in Paris between 1947-1950, a trilogy christened "The Beckett Trilogy". Renowned for its daring narrative structure and dark, absurdist humour - Molloy challenges existential conceptions of the human condition and explores the theme of identity. Beckett wrote all three books in French acting entirely as his own translator, besides this collaboration with Bowles. Paul Auster writes of the creativity innate within his method of translation; "Beckett’s renderings of his own work are never literal, word-by-word transcriptions. They are free, highly-inventive adaptations of the original text or, perhaps more accurately, 'repatriations' from one language to the other, from one culture to the other. In effect, he wrote every book twice, and each version bears its own indelible mark".
The Trilogy is considered the most important of Beckett's non-dramatic works.
#2120292