Samuel Beckett was born in Foxrock, near Dublin, in 1906. He moved to Paris as a young man, where he began writing both
prose and poetry. During the war he participated in the
Resistance. Until 1945 Beckett wrote in English, but
thereafter began to write directly in French, and
most of his major work was written in his
adopted tounge. In 1969 he was awarded
the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is known
as one of the most improtant writers of the
twentieth century. His view of life and of mankind,
couched in a style that is a model of lean elegance,
has had an influence on contemporary literature as powerful
as that of Joyce, Proust, Kafka and Pound. A master of the novel, Beckett has also written plays, short stories, poems, scripts for radio, television and film, and a critical study of Proust.

His major works include Waiting for Godot, which has sold over a million copies in the United States and is generally acknnowledged as one of the most important plays ever written.