Samuel Beckett (1906-89), playwright, poet, and novelist, was born in Foxrock, County Dublin. He excelled in his studies at Trinity College Dublin and received a BA in Modern Languages. Beckett permanently settled in Paris in 1937, where he joined the French resistance to fight the Nazi occupation during the Second World War. Beckett’s literary career was slow to progress until, at age 46, he shot to fame with the staging of En attendant Godot. Translated into English as Waiting for Godot, the play combines absurdist dialogue and situations to explore the meaning – or meaninglessness – of human existence. He was awarded, and reluctantly accepted, the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969. Beckett died in Paris in 1989, and is buried there in Montparnasse Cemetery.
