BECKETT, Samuel. Molloy. Paris: The Olympia Press. 1955.
8vo. Blue and black striped paper covers with green title headings on front cover; encased in blank beige dust wrapper; pp. [7], 8-241, [5]; spine detached from body; cms removed from pg. 241 and rear end paper, 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". Renowed 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