The Expelled and Other Novellas

`He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going. He brings forth a body of beauty ...'- Harold Pinter These four stories — 'First Love', 'The Expelled', 'The Calmative' and 'The End' — were first written in French soon after the Second World War and are characterized by Beckett's concern with the helpless individual consciousness. Rich in verbal and situational humour, they offer the reader a fascinating insight into preoccupations which have remained constant throughout the work of a writer who has transformed the art of the novel and the contemporary theatre. `In the modern history of literature at least he is a unique moral figure, not a dreamer of rose gardens but a cultivator of what will grow in the wasteland' — Hugh Kenner 'Beckett's work is entirely sui generic, unclassifiable, disturbing, funny, cruel, and inspiring. It defies all attempts at interpretation — like the world of atomic particles where the introduction of an observer itself changes that which is to be observed' — Martin Esslin `He is the last of the giants — in a sense too the last of the modernists. Once the amanuensis of Joyce, he is perhaps his only true heir... He has remained above and beyond literary fashion. No post-war writer has attracted more critical attention — and none has remained so entirely elusive and enigmatic' — The Times Cover photograph by Chris Killip