James Knowlson

Samuel Beckett's long-standing friend, James Knowlson, recreates
Beckett's youth in Ireland, his studies at Trinity College, Dublin in
the early 1920s and from there to the Continent, where he plunged into
the multicultural literary society of late-1920s Paris. The biography
throws new light on Beckett's stormy relationship with his mother, the
psychotherapy he received after the death of his father and his crucial
relationship with James Joyce. There is also material on Beckett's
six-month visit to Germany as the Nazi's tightened their grip.;The book
includes unpublished material on Beckett's personal life after he chose
to live in France, including his own account of his work for a
Resistance cell during the war, his escape from the Gestapo and his
retreat into hiding.;Obsessively private, Beckett was wholly committed
to the work which eventually brought his public fame, beginning with
the controversial success of "Waiting for Godot" in 1953, and
culminating in the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1969.;James Knowlson is the general editor of "The Theatrical Notebooks
of Samuel Beckett".