Molloy: Introduced by Colm Toibin

by Samuel Beckett

The first of the three greatest novels by the era-defining Nobel laureate, reissued for a new generation.

I am still alive then. That may come in useful.

Molloy, a sordid, bedridden vagrant, recalls a long bicycle ride in search of his mother. He describes sucking on stones, falling in love, getting arrested, killing a dog. Moran, a private detective, sets out to look for Molloy. But as Moran’s physical and mental state deteriorate, his narrative starts to mirror Molloy’s in mysterious ways.

Molloy is the first of the three great novels Samuel Beckett produced during his ''frenzy of writing'' in the late 1940s. The others are Malone Dies and The Unnamable.

304 pages, Paperback

Published March 13, 2025

About the author

Novels of Samuel Barclay Beckett, Irish writer, include Murphy in 1938 and Malone Dies in 1951; a wider audience know his absurdist plays, such as Waiting for Godot in 1952 and Krapp's Last Tape in 1959, and he won the Nobel Prize of 1969 for literature.

Samuel Barclay Beckett, an avant-garde theater director and poet, lived in France for most of his adult life. He used English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black gallows humor.

People regard most influence of Samuel Barclay Beckett of the 20th century. James Augustine Aloysius Joyce strongly influenced him, whom people consider as one modernist. People sometimes consider him as an inspiration to many later first postmodernists. He is one of the key in what Martin Esslin called the "theater of the absurd". His later career worked with increasing minimalism.

People awarded Samuel Barclay Beckett "for his writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation".

In 1984, people elected Samuel Barclay Bennett as Saoi of Aosdána.

Reviews

[mippers · Rating 4 out of 5]

my first beckett book,,, not going to be another for awhile. did i enjoy it? is beckett to be enjoyed? what was this book about?? idk
def gonna start keeping sucking stones in my pocket for whenever i need a pick me up, though

[Joe Walby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two wonderfully grimy streams of consciousness which are both littered with confusion, aimlessness and existentialism. The protagonists become completely detached from both society and themselves, wandering alone in the countryside with nothing but spiraling thoughts and impulses. Although sometimes difficult to grasp, this is an absurdly creative representation of physical and mental degradation, or perhaps liberation. I feel like I need to revisit this in a year or two.

[Tadgh Dolan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing happens. You immerse yourself in a claustrophobic narrative. The first act ends. You breathe a sigh of relief. The second act starts. You are given a morsel of coherency. Then, in the final pages it's stripped away from you again. This book is unrelenting, exhausting and gives little reward to the reader. Yet, it's purely unique. The language exact and precise. And, I've read nothing else like it. As Beckett says in Waiting for Godot, "Nothing to be done." Molloy just takes that one step further, pushing the prose further and further into madness, until nothing is left, except the bareness and mundaneness of life.

[Baxter Kamana-Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mad book.

[Oleksandr Ladyzhenskyi · Rating 5 out of 5]

15 пососаних камнєй з 16

[O H · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s enough to make one a Guattarian!