WATT

MALONE DIES

An old man is dying in a room. His bowl of soup comes, his pots are emptied. He waits to die. And while he waits, he constructs stories, mainly to pass the time. Saposcat, the Lambert family, Macmann and his nurse Moll. Other figures weave in and out of his vision and his imagination.

MOLLOY

The narrative of Molloy, old and ill, remembering and forgetting, scarcely human, begets a parallel tale of the spinsterish Moran, a private detective sent in search of him, whose own deterioration during the quest joins in with the catalogue of Molloy's woes.

MURPHY

Our work-shy eponymous hero, Murphy, adrift in London, realises that desire can never be satisfied and withdraws from life, in search of stupor. Murphy's lovestruck fiancé Celia tries with tragic pathos to draw him back, but her attempts are doomed to failure.

THE UNNAMABLE

The Unnamable - so named because he knows not who he may be - is from a nameless place. He speaks of previous selves ('all these Murphys, Molloys, and Malones...') as diversions from the need to stop speaking altogether. But, as with the other novels in the Beckett trilogy, the prose is full of marvellous precisions, full of its own reasons for keeping going.

WAITING FOR GODOT

Beckett's classic 'Waiting for Godot', has been famously described as a play in which "nothing happens, twice". As Vladimir and Estragon await the arrival of Godot, they discuss their lives and consider hanging themselves, but choose to wait for Godot instead, in the hope that he can tell them what their purpose is.