Samuel Beckett
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Samuel Beckett
The Nobel Prize in Literature 1969
Born: 13 April 1906, Dublin, Ireland
Died: 22 December 1989, Paris, France
Residence at the time of the award: Ireland
Prize motivation: “for his writing, which - in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation”
Language: English; French
Prize share: 1/1
Life
Samuel Beckett was born in a suburb of Dublin, Ireland. He worked as a teacher of French at Trinity College, Dublin, and École Normale Supèrieure in Paris, where he also settled permanently in 1938. In his writing he alternated between English and French and translated his own works. During World War II he joined the resistance and was forced to flee to the French countryside. Toward the end of the war, he worked as a volunteer for the Red Cross. Beckett’s major literary breakthrough came during the 1950s, when he wrote a series of groundbreaking plays and novels.
Work
Samuel Beckett produced his most important works—four novels, two dramas, a collection of short stories, essays, and art criticism—during an intensely creative period in the late 1940s. Irishman Beckett had settled in France and wrote in both French and English. His experiences during World War II—insecurity, confusion, exile, hunger, deprivation—came to shape his writing. In his most famous work, the drama Waiting for Godot, he examines the most basic foundations of our lives with strikingly dark humor.
Nobel Prizes and laureates
Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.
See them all presented here.
